Federal judge says NSA program appears to violate Constitution

[jimmy olsen]

Almost Orwellian? But they tried so hard!

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/16/21925625-federal-judge-says-nsa-program-appears-to-violate-constitution?lite

Federal judge says NSA program appears to violate Constitution

By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent

A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency's gathering of data on all telephone calls made in the United States appears to violate the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches.

The judge, Richard Leon of U.S. District Court in Washington, said that the NSA relied on "almost-Orwellian technology" that would have been unimaginable a generation ago, at the time of a landmark Supreme Court decision on phone records.

Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled in favor of two Americans who challenged the NSA program and wanted their data removed from NSA records. The judge found that the two were likely to prevail under the Fourth Amendment, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The judge put his ruling on hold to allow the government to appeal. White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked about the ruling at a briefing shortly after it became public and said that he was not yet aware of it.

Leon said that the government was acting in an "understandable zeal to protect our homeland," and acknowledged that there were national security interests and new constitutional issues in play.

He batted away the government's argument that removing certain people from the NSA database would degrade the program.

"I am not convinced at this point in the litigation that the NSA's database has ever truly served the purpose of rapidly identifying terrorists in time-sensitive investigations," he wrote, "and so I am certainly not convinced that the removal of two individuals from the database will 'degrade' the program in any meaningful sense.

"I will leave it to other judges to decide how to handle any future litigation in their courts," he added.

Leon wrote that the government was justifying its counterterrorism program based on a 34-year-old Supreme Court precedent that has been eclipsed by "technological advances and a cell phone-centric lifestyle heretofore inconceivable."

That Supreme Court precedent held that Americans had no privacy interest to keep the government from accessing records stored by phone companies.

"The relationship between the police and the phone company" a generation ago, the judge said, "is nothing compared to the relationship that has apparently evolved over the last seven years between the government and telecom companies."

"It's one thing to say that people expect phone companies to occasionally provide informaiton to law enforcement; it is quite another to suggest that our citizens expect all phone companies to operate what is effectively a joint intelligence-gathering operation with the government," the judge wrote.

The plaintiffs brought their case June 6, one day after the British newspaper The Guardian published the first revelations from Edward Snowden, the former federal contractor who exposed details of massive government surveillance programs.

Snowden has been granted temporary asylum by Russia.

President Barack Obama will address "national security and the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures" in a meeting with executives from 15 leading tech companies on Tuesday, the White House said. The meeting will also cover technical issues with HealthCare.gov and ways the government can partner with the technology industry.

[Ideologue]

The Constitution is the biggest problem America faces in converting into the utopia it can be, if we only had the will and the way forward.  The Transparent Society is one of the most important aspects to building the new world.

[grumbler]

The Constitution is the biggest problem America faces in converting into the utopia it can be, if we only had the will and the way forward.  The Transparent Society is one of the most important aspects to building the new world.

  Good one.  I love how you slip "Transparent Society" in there, as if that wasn't itself the biggest problem facing America's quest to become a utopian society.  The Constitution isn't likely to help much against the Transparent Society, though it will help a little bit.

[jimmy olsen]

The Constitution is the biggest problem America faces in converting into the utopia it can be, if we only had the will and the way forward.  The Transparent Society is one of the most important aspects to building the new world.

What's your interpretation of Orwel's 1984 Ide?

[Ideologue]

Deeply implausible, but serviceable as the allegory it was.

[Ed Anger]

Deeply implausible, but serviceable as the allegory it was.

The film is a C

[The Minsky Moment]

Deeply implausible, but serviceable as the allegory it was.

The film is a C

Pedestrian effort, cannot compare with the sheer majesty of Bob Hoskins' bravura everyman performance, Dennis Hopper's leering menace, and most importantly Joseph A. Porro's ingenious costume design (prefiguring his extraordinary postmodern melange of historical styles in Stargate) -- redolent of the finest work of Edith Head's cousin's acupuncturist -- yielding the 2nd 1/2 finest film of the 1990s, Super Mario Brothers

[CountDeMoney]

Pedestrian effort, cannot compare with the sheer majesty of Bob Hoskins' bravura everyman performance, Dennis Hopper's leering menace, and most importantly Joseph A. Porro's ingenious costume design (prefiguring his extraordinary postmodern melange of historical styles in Stargate) -- redolent of the finest work of Edith Head's cousin's acupuncturist -- yielding the 2nd 1/2 finest film of the 1990s, Super Mario Brothers

This.  Whatever it is. 

[Ed Anger]

Deeply implausible, but serviceable as the allegory it was.

The film is a C

Pedestrian effort, cannot compare with the sheer majesty of Bob Hoskins' bravura everyman performance, Dennis Hopper's leering menace, and most importantly Joseph A. Porro's ingenious costume design (prefiguring his extraordinary postmodern melange of historical styles in Stargate) -- redolent of the finest work of Edith Head's cousin's acupuncturist -- yielding the 2nd 1/2 finest film of the 1990s, Super Mario Brothers

r

[Ideologue]

I'm admit to a fondness for that movie.  My mom knew a guy who played a goomba.

[Ideologue]

And I enjoyed the parody.  Good show, Joan.

P.S. I do like Stargate, and I do like its costume design.

[Ed Anger]

I'm admit to a fondness for that movie.  My mom knew a guy who played a goomba.

My then 13 year old nephew tried watching that. He asked me what drugs the director was on.

[jimmy olsen]

I was so excited when I saw that Minksy posted in this thread, eagerly awaiting his legal analysis... 

[Ed Anger]

Life is disappointment.

[jimmy olsen]

Life is disappointment.

Says the millionaire from his palatial estate overlooking his vineyard, surrounded by his beautiful young wife, his loving children and his concubine imported from his French chateau.