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
QuoteFederal 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.
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.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 16, 2013, 05:37:20 PM
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.
:lol: 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.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 16, 2013, 05:37:20 PM
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?
Deeply implausible, but serviceable as the allegory it was.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 16, 2013, 10:01:21 PM
Deeply implausible, but serviceable as the allegory it was.
The film is a
C
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 16, 2013, 10:15:36 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 16, 2013, 10:01:21 PM
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
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 16, 2013, 10:47:41 PM
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. :D
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 16, 2013, 10:47:41 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 16, 2013, 10:15:36 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 16, 2013, 10:01:21 PM
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
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fblueskiesabove.us%2Fpics%2Fgifs%2Fbusey_clapping_hypno.gif&hash=bad877df78d5ec3eb2c54069ddf15bd9691903a5)
I'm admit to a fondness for that movie. My mom knew a guy who played a goomba. :)
And I enjoyed the parody. Good show, Joan. :hug:
P.S. I do like Stargate, and I do like its costume design. :blush:
Quote from: Ideologue on December 16, 2013, 11:34:55 PM
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.
I was so excited when I saw that Minksy posted in this thread, eagerly awaiting his legal analysis... <_<
Life is disappointment.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 16, 2013, 11:45:43 PM
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. -_-
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 16, 2013, 11:51:31 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 16, 2013, 11:45:43 PM
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. -_-
HEY NOW
She's not as young anymore.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwhatscookingamerica.net%2FSandwich%2FRoastBeefSandwich.jpg&hash=62d6672094b38d721307f44e9e60521e5741b0b2)
Classy Money, really classy...
A little horseradish, it's all good.
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
Quote from: CountDeMoney on December 16, 2013, 11:53:16 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 16, 2013, 11:51:31 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 16, 2013, 11:45:43 PM
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. -_-
HEY NOW
She's not as young anymore.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwhatscookingamerica.net%2FSandwich%2FRoastBeefSandwich.jpg&hash=62d6672094b38d721307f44e9e60521e5741b0b2)
:lol:
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:35:24 AM
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
I've cut red meat out about 50 to 75 percent out of my diet. YOU DON'T HEAR ME COMPLAINING.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 08:48:10 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:35:24 AM
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
I've cut red meat out about 50 to 75 percent out of my diet. YOU DON'T HEAR ME COMPLAINING.
A can of pie cherries will help with the gout.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 16, 2013, 11:44:20 PM
I was so excited when I saw that Minksy posted in this thread, eagerly awaiting his legal analysis... <_<
Very tough to evaluate.
The problem with using the Fourth Amendment to challenge this kind of action is that the information being gathered is information already in the hands of the phone company.
So gathering the information does not involve a physical invasion of property, and it is tough to argue there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in data that the phone company routinely collects and can do just about anything it wants. Indeed, there is a long-standing Supreme Court case from 1979 that addresses this question --
Smith v. Maryland -- and it ruled that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their call records.
Judge Leon's response to
Smith is to cite language from concurring opinions in the recent car surveillance case
US v. Jones which make a distinction between surveillance techniques that are short-term and ephemeral - like using GPS technology to track the movements of a suspect in flight - and those that are sustained and long-term - like using the same technology to track a person's evey movement for months. Four justices joined that concurring opinion, and a fifth (Sotomayor) wrote an opinion expressing even more concern about the use of GPS technology and questioning the
Smith principle. So that is 5 justices that support that view. Judge Leon's argument is that the unlimited data collection of the NSA program is a paradigmatic example of a long-term monitoring program and hence unconstitutional under the
Jones concurrences.
The hitch in the reasoning is that the phone data has already been gathered by the phone company so arguably there isn't the same expectation that a person's phone records won't be systematically collected as there is an expectation that one's movements (even if public) won't be exhaustively tracked over months.
Perhaps a more logical way to deal with this problem would be to say something like this:
Quote[T]he Court determines that individuals who convey information to third parties have "assumed the risk" of disclosure to the government. . . This analysis is misconceived in two critical respects.
Implicit in the concept of assumption of risk is some notion of choice . . .[H]ere, unless a person is prepared to forgo use of what for many has become a personal or professional necessity, he cannot help but accept the risk of surveillance. . . . It is idle to speak of "assuming" risks in contexts where, as a practical mater, individuals have no realistic alternative.
More fundamentally, to make risk analysis dispositive in assessing the reasonableness of privacy expectations would allow the government to define the scope of Fourth Amendment protections. For example, law enforcement officials, simply by announcing their intent to monitor the content of random samples of first-class mail or private phone conversations, could put the public on notice of the risks they would thereafter assume in such communications. . . . In my view, whether privacy expectations are legitimate within the meaning of Katz depends not on the risks an individual can be presumed to accept when imparting information to third parties, but on the risks he should be forced to assume in a free and open society
That was Thurgood Marshall's opinion in
Smith. But it was a dissenting opinion. It is not the law.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 08:48:10 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:35:24 AM
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
I've cut red meat out about 50 to 75 percent out of my diet. YOU DON'T HEAR ME COMPLAINING.
:console:
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:54:35 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 08:48:10 AM
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:35:24 AM
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
I've cut red meat out about 50 to 75 percent out of my diet. YOU DON'T HEAR ME COMPLAINING.
:console:
When I do eat red meat, I make it swim in A1 sauce.
I like A1. When I go to Red Robin, I get the A1 Peppercorn burger.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 12:57:33 PM
When I do eat red meat, I make it swim in A1 sauce.
You are forgetting the ketchup
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 17, 2013, 01:02:19 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 12:57:33 PM
When I do eat red meat, I make it swim in A1 sauce.
You are forgetting the ketchup
I've switched to Taco Bell mild sauce packets.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 01:01:15 PM
I like A1. When I go to Red Robin, I get the A1 Peppercorn burger.
:thumbsup: That's a good one.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 17, 2013, 11:06:41 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 16, 2013, 11:44:20 PM
I was so excited when I saw that Minksy posted in this thread, eagerly awaiting his legal analysis... <_<
Very tough to evaluate.
The problem with using the Fourth Amendment to challenge this kind of action is that the information being gathered is information already in the hands of the phone company.
So gathering the information does not involve a physical invasion of property, and it is tough to argue there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in data that the phone company routinely collects and can do just about anything it wants. Indeed, there is a long-standing Supreme Court case from 1979 that addresses this question -- Smith v. Maryland -- and it ruled that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their call records.
Judge Leon's response to Smith is to cite language from concurring opinions in the recent car surveillance case US v. Jones which make a distinction between surveillance techniques that are short-term and ephemeral - like using GPS technology to track the movements of a suspect in flight - and those that are sustained and long-term - like using the same technology to track a person's evey movement for months. Four justices joined that concurring opinion, and a fifth (Sotomayor) wrote an opinion expressing even more concern about the use of GPS technology and questioning the Smith principle. So that is 5 justices that support that view. Judge Leon's argument is that the unlimited data collection of the NSA program is a paradigmatic example of a long-term monitoring program and hence unconstitutional under the Jones concurrences.
The hitch in the reasoning is that the phone data has already been gathered by the phone company so arguably there isn't the same expectation that a person's phone records won't be systematically collected as there is an expectation that one's movements (even if public) won't be exhaustively tracked over months.
Perhaps a more logical way to deal with this problem would be to say something like this:
Quote[T]he Court determines that individuals who convey information to third parties have "assumed the risk" of disclosure to the government. . . This analysis is misconceived in two critical respects.
Implicit in the concept of assumption of risk is some notion of choice . . .[H]ere, unless a person is prepared to forgo use of what for many has become a personal or professional necessity, he cannot help but accept the risk of surveillance. . . . It is idle to speak of "assuming" risks in contexts where, as a practical mater, individuals have no realistic alternative.
More fundamentally, to make risk analysis dispositive in assessing the reasonableness of privacy expectations would allow the government to define the scope of Fourth Amendment protections. For example, law enforcement officials, simply by announcing their intent to monitor the content of random samples of first-class mail or private phone conversations, could put the public on notice of the risks they would thereafter assume in such communications. . . . In my view, whether privacy expectations are legitimate within the meaning of Katz depends not on the risks an individual can be presumed to accept when imparting information to third parties, but on the risks he should be forced to assume in a free and open society
That was Thurgood Marshall's opinion in Smith. But it was a dissenting opinion. It is not the law.
Not, in general, a big fan of Marshall, but I agree with him here.
If anything, the ideas shown in the bit posted here are even more relevant now than they were 34 years ago.
:hmm:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/18/nsa-bulk-collection-phone-date-obama-review-panel
QuoteObama review panel: strip NSA of power to collect phone data records
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/18/politics/nsa-report/
QuoteReview: NSA snooping program should stay in place
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 19, 2013, 02:30:29 AM
:hmm:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/18/nsa-bulk-collection-phone-date-obama-review-panel
QuoteObama review panel: strip NSA of power to collect phone data records
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/18/politics/nsa-report/
QuoteReview: NSA snooping program should stay in place
This is why you read more than just the headline. The report says domestic metadata should be stored by the phone companies so that intelligentsia can access it on demand instead of allowing intelligence agencies to collect and warehouse the data themselves.
On the other hand, foreign surveillance isn't in as bad shape, but should require higher security clearance to make calls pertaining to collecting data on foreign parties.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 12:57:33 PM
When I do eat red meat, I make it swim in A1 sauce.
So basically you're saying you hate the taste of red meat.
Hippie :angry:
Quote from: derspiess on December 20, 2013, 11:23:28 AM
So basically you're saying you hate the taste of red meat.
Hippie :angry:
Surely you still have kin living up in the holler who burn their steaks to a crisp.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 20, 2013, 11:26:58 AM
Quote from: derspiess on December 20, 2013, 11:23:28 AM
So basically you're saying you hate the taste of red meat.
Hippie :angry:
Surely you still have kin living up in the holler who burn their steaks to a crisp.
No, sir.
No kin, no crisp, or no both?
Only kin in the holler is my retired CIA uncle and he cooks his steaks rare to medium.
I supposed I have some second cousins & whatnot in WV but I never maintained any level of contact with them. Only my dad's mom's side of the family is from WV. Other 3/4 are Buckeyes.
I hate it when Derfaschist makes sense.
Quote from: derspiess on December 20, 2013, 11:23:28 AM
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 17, 2013, 12:57:33 PM
When I do eat red meat, I make it swim in A1 sauce.
So basically you're saying you hate the taste of red meat.
Hippie :angry:
Took long enough for somebody to bite.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:35:24 AM
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
Tastes like misguided morality.
I read this as: Federal judge says NASA program appears to violate Constitution
Quote from: Ideologue on December 17, 2013, 12:35:24 AM
God, I want a French dip.
Not a crass Monkeybutt joke. I want a fucking roast beef sandwich, alright?
Or--mmm--lentil soup. Yay. Fuck let's eat up. :rolleyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYHEACE-v0k (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYHEACE-v0k)