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

#441

Post by ColanR » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #289

ColanR wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"held accountable != "punished" or "punative". I'm not talking about punishment or punative action. I'm talking about accountability, where being 'held accountable' could be a synonym for 'held responsible'. In this case, the way I used the phrase, Britain was 'held responsible' by simply being told to 'go away'.

But being "held responsible" and being "held accountable" are very different. Holding someone responsible means to blame them. Holding someone accountable means giving them consequences. Many people blame the government for all sorts of things. Only a very small number of those things is the government ever held accountable for. I agree that many people blamed the British Government for their problems, indeed that wa…

you: Holding someone accountable means giving them consequences.

you: Britain as an entity certainly faced consequences from US independence

me: The 'holding accountable' was the revocation of Britain's authority over the colonies.

Glad we agree.

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

#442

Post by bdamm » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

pulse7 wrote: post #389

maeln wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Trials are secret because they don't want to reveal further secrets. On the other hand you hear people saying: "If you are doing everything right, you have nothing to hide."

If you have nothing to hide, it's only because there's nobody trying to hurt you right now.

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

#443

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #101

zucker42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unconstitutional ex-post-facto punishment This point makes no sense. A properly passed amendment to the Constitution (presumably what is meant by update) can never be unconstitutional by definition. Furthermore, prohibiting ex-post-facto laws means you can't pass a law which criminalizes actions in the past. But courts don't pass laws, they interpret them. There's plenty of cases where courts interpret a law in a n…

>But courts don't pass laws, they interpret them. This is a common misconception. Courts don't pass statutes , but they certainly create law. Nearly every ruling from any sort of appeals court answers a question of law which is then binding on everyone under the jurisdiction of said court. This is the essential difference between a common law and civil law system. There are still rulings in the US that cite old Engli…

> Nearly every ruling from any sort of appeals court answers a question of law which is then binding on everyone under the jurisdiction of said court.

While it's true that courts (in the US and similar systems) make law, this specific claim is an exaggeration, at least as regards the US. Full precedential weight generally only applies to published decisions, which are only about 1/3 of decisions of, for instance, the US Courts of Appeals.

https://libguides.law.ucla.edu/c.php?g=183345&p=1208531

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

#444

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #6

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. The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting…

> The US constitution needs lots of updates but this maybe the most important item -- manadatory prison terms for anyone acting on behalf of government who is found violating the bill of rights or any restriction set by articles of the constitution.

We already have federal criminal and civil law establishing penalties, damages, and other remedies for deprivation of rights under color of law, plus the Constitutional power of impeachment which is designed to serve that role for offenses against the Constitutional order of government that are not adequately remediable through traditional legal process.

Your problem seems really to be that laws are always enforced by humans and you don't like the way that the humans responsible for the existing enforcement mechanisms apply them. That's not something that is likely to be fixed particularly well by focussing on changing the law rather than focussing on changing who is entrusted with it's application.

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

#445

Post by gwright » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #352

gwright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then we do not live in a democracy with a rule of law. Why have the constitution at all? The concept of checks and balances is an attempt to mitigate this problem. The "higher authority" is the other branches of government. But even that only goes so far. Ultimately the entire scheme only works because individual humans agree to abide by the implicit social contract to live within the system of laws. To the extent…

You can dismantle the surveillance powers of the NSA without dismantling the whole country. If not, then those people might actually be correct.

> If not, then those people might actually be correct.

This doesn't seem reasonable to me. The amount of misery and injustice that would accompany any sort of dissolution of civil society would be enormous and with no path towards something better.

To the extent that some people who think the current system is broken beyond repair make an effort to explain what they would do different it basically amounts to "everything will be better if we just give all the power to my preferred group of people", which sounds a lot like fascism to me.

The expanding scope/power of national government (all branches) is a huge part of our problem. Accelerating that trend but with the "right people" in place is not an attractive solution from my point of view. It doesn't matter to me if the "right people" have a (D) or (R) after their name, expansive national government is a bad idea.

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

#446

Post by hyperdimension » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

entropicdrifter wrote: post #439

save_ferris wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 powerf…

>Remember, there's an incredible amount of money changing hands in the military-industrial complex, and money plays a huge role in winning elections. This, to me, is the heart of the issue. American politics are fundamentally corrupted by campaign financing

I don't know, I feel like

> A legislator's primary goal is to get reelected

is the more pressing problem to issue first. Is their "primary goal" not to legislate first? Pandering to the court of public opinion in order to secure re-election seems like it would also cause all sorts of conflicting incentives.

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

#447

Post by sitkack » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

gwright wrote: post #445

raxxorrax wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can dismantle the surveillance powers of the NSA without dismantling the whole country. If not, then those people might actually be correct.

> If not, then those people might actually be correct. This doesn't seem reasonable to me. The amount of misery and injustice that would accompany any sort of dissolution of civil society would be enormous and with no path towards something better. To the extent that some people who think the current system is broken beyond repair make an effort to explain what they would do different it basically amounts to "everyth…

It isn't the expansion but the loss of control. Large government is fine as long as it serves the people. Large government doesn't also have to mean millions of rules.

Civil society also doesn't have to be tied directly to government. America's biggest problems is that we are shedding norms faster than we acquiring them.

I had a conversation with a business ethics professor, and every one of her students for the most part want to work at Amazon and they have favorable opinions about Amazon's means and methods. Corn pone and all that. The lust for money has too large of an effect on our society.

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

#448

Post by spikels » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

save_ferris wrote: post #424

maeln wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 powerf…

Even our most powerful political leaders are actually afraid of intelligence services as Senator Schumer once explained.

> Schumer: “Let me tell you. You take on the intelligence community. They have six ways from Sunday at getting back at ya.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rH0EBAyhnA

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

#449

Post by hyperdimension » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

furyg3 wrote: post #387

tialaramex wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're spooks. This is what they're for. The constraints are at best just theatre, obviously their adversaries aren't going to obey these rules, and they know that so if they are to be effective (and if they aren't why would they exist at all?) they will also disobey these rules. The purpose of such rules in practice is to help the American public to sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You…

Sorry but I disagree (partially). Where I agree is that covert agents operating abroad are by-definition criminals. Foreign governments don't give permission for spies to be present, and they break all sorts of their nations host laws while there. Morally this is questionable... if you believe that 'all men' have 'certain unalienable rights' then surely those should apply to how you treat all humans on earth and not…

> do bad shit abroad but not to your own citizens

Well, yeah, that's the entire point of the Five Eyes: each member can spy on the others and share the results with the rest of them, but if one member were to spy on its own people, perish the thought! That would be unconstitutional!

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

#450

Post by arminiusreturns » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

For those talking about this subject, I would like to remind you that it is the surveillance network that is the equivalent of an automated Epstein system of blackmail. Not only should we reign in the surveillance state, but we need to remember that to do that we have to stop being so naive and need to understand that the blackmail system is at play in the legislative. This isn't just overfocus on re-election, or k-street normal corruption or any of the normal accusations against congress we have to fight, this is state sponsered blackmail and worse. To try to fix other issues without adressing the blackmail one is not going to be a systemic fix. It's a root causal issue.

So, a question of chicken and egg. What do you try to fix first, congress, or the laws/system? I think congress is the only practical avenue.