Privacy warriors haul NSA into court, demand swift end to mass call snooping A collection of civil-liberties campaigners has called on a US federal court to summarily block government agencies from monitoring phones. The optimistic bunch, which includes the EFF, claims that large-scale collection of call metadata is preventing them from carrying out their day-to-day business, and threatens protections …
They're spying on Brits for the CIA, when they are supposed to be spying on the CIA for Brits.
And can we sue ministers and Parker too?
Because they're mincing around like the CIA is operating them like puppets.
Are they compromised? Has the CIA got something on them? Because they're talking a load of b*ll*cks when justifying traitorous behaviour.
The muppet US SCOTUS can't hide behind the technicality that there is not public information anyone was spied on this time. What's more disgusting than the security apparatus building up a house of cards and cocoon of lies, was the judiciary going along with it all the way to the top. The Patriot Act a century from now will be looked at in the same light as Japanese American internment in WW2 and the Separate but Equal decision from more than 100 years ago is looked at today. The Baby Boomer generation legacy of fear and greed.
"The Patriot Act a century from now will be looked at in the same light as Japanese American internment in WW2 and the Separate but Equal decision from more than 100 years ago is looked at today."
Looking at this completely objectively, it is regretful that the only clause with the possibility of your statement becoming reality is whether or not the Patriot Act is overturned, and when.
If history is written by the victors, then the historical light that the Patriot Act will be viewed in will be strongly dependent upon its future existence in our times; if, 100 years from now, some forms of it still exist in terms of governmental policies, at that time the Patriot Act will only be seen as our first steps into a "safer" (note quotes) world.
doronron, imagine if you will, the amount of dirt and crap that news papers over the years have managed to scrape on government officials.
Now, remember the point when Mohamed Al Fayed admitted on TV that he had enough dirt to take down the government several times over if he wanted. (It was some channel 4 show several years ago, although I think he was talking mostly about the royals about when his son and diana were, in his opinion, murdered)
Now consider the fact that GCHQ has all of its resources spying on brits, most probably people in high places too, as well as backing from other intelligence agencies including NSA / CIA etc, and think about how much dirt they must have by now. How many back handers they know the government took to release such and such early, how many backroom meetings, how many MPs have solicited hookers, snorted coke in the house of commons, once experimented with homosexuallity in college.
If the tabloids with their limited resources and amateurish sleuths can get enough info to be embarassing, a rich guy like Mohamad Al Fayed can get enough information to take down key figures 'if he wanted'. Just think how much dirt these intelligence services have and then consider the amount their budgets have increased over the years, the amount of new 'anti-terror laws' which have given them more legal freedoms and how little the governments are actually different from one another. Then ask yourself who really runs the country.
Not us, not the people we elect, knowledge is power, and intelligence agencies have a lot of it stored up on the right people for use at the right time. I wouldn't be surprised if the tabloids didn't get their info from GCHQ 'leaks' regarding people in power that they didn't want there.
*removes tinfoil hat*
Or it could just be that our government is filled with a bunch of spineless jellyfish.
"Just think how much dirt these intelligence services have"
I watched that Spy chiefs appearance testifying to Rifkin (who is like the British Diane Feinstein), and it was like Gerry Anderson was back from the grave and Silvia Anderson had made the costumes.
Heaven forbit they should get a f**ing warrant to spy on Brits, instead of claiming there are thousands of domestic extremists in the UK, when Rifkin only a few months ago said there were only 200 or so Brits being spied on. They can't even get their story straight.
Look, I know that you are a bit slow and dimwitted, as evidenced by your charmingly frank nickname, so I will explain this to you slowly and using as many small words as possible....
- it takes quite a long time to setup a party to win an election
- the Courts in this country are already 'independent' of political parties. Clearly, under Wowfoods' view; they would be as compromised as anything else.
- these are the nice, easy to underestand replies. I'll respect your dimwittedness and not go into any detail as to how your fatuous reply doesnt answer any of the current issues at hand regarding the outrageous liberties 'security' services take with our freedoms in the name of so-called anti-terrorism.
While I'm here though - I will note that every time I hear some security apologist whinge that Snowden has given the security coup of the decade to Al-Qaeda; I laugh at such Nursery-Rhyme justification of the fact that they have no actual answer to those actions that are patently illegal (let alone being bothered to justify anything under that could be described as 'grey' activities - and lets not even bother with the paltry fig-leaf of 'legality' they have setup).
Now - would you like some hay?
"those actions that are patently illegal" (@M.D.)
"the judiciary going along with it all the way to the top", "The Baby Boomer generation legacy of fear and greed." (@asdf)
I agree. Honestly; there is no doubt at all that they are well outside the law. The U.S. Constitution has been ignored, but it is still the law and it still binds all three of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary.
The clear intent of the U.S. Constitution is to prohibit much of what has been going on. The SCOTUS was politically appointed and it shows. To be sure, they should all be invited to step down and impeached otherwise.
How clear does the U.S. Bill of Rights have to be? NSA snooping is simply illegal, should be shut down instantly, all of their ill-gotten information destroyed, the worst offenders prosecuted and the rest excused from duty.
By the way, the U.S. Constitution says nothing whatever about those rights applying exclusively to U.S. citizens. If you have been affected by it you have a genuine grievance against the perpetrators.
Our relationship (I am Canadian) with the United States is predicated on the notion that they will not be taken over by outlaws and become a rogue state. They have been taken over by outlaws and have become a rogue state. Citizens of the G7, at least are justified in demanding that it stop.
The mere *threat* of violence is a crime. Similarly, a wholesale operation that is actively collecting records on people everywhere poses a credible threat against all of us.
The U.S. Government is essentially trying to fly the idea that they need to spy on my children in the bathroom so that they can prevent others from spying on my children in the bathroom. That is disturbing, but it is even more disturbing that the majority of people find that argument convincing.
As for the baby boomers -- I am one and I am ashamed of what my generation became. As a group, we seem to have no redeeming features and are nothing but a net liability. We had and still have every opportunity to make the world a better place. Instead, we worked diligently to capture more than our share at the expense of everyone else, including our own children. The world is nearly the exact opposite of what it should be. We wasted a wonderful opportunity and it was not ours to waste.
</soap>
"Section 215 allows authorities to collect business records if they are related to an investigation of terrorist activity."
This is what you get when you legislate in a hurry. With an intelligence agency, the reaction is 'Oh wow! Let's collect everyone's business records and investigate them for terrorist activity.'
When you get complaints that this totally subverts the original legislation, assume your investigations had a chilling effect on terrorist plans and blithely announce that your investigations 'prevented X* terrorist attacks'.
(*Where X is a random number multiplied by the number of zeros in your budget.)
The drift of essentially all comments is that the Section 215 telephone metadata collection is plainly illegal and unconstitutional. As btrower observed, that will be determined in court; and until then, at least, it is lawful. Indeed, much of the evidence that it is being done derives from the warrants, issued by a federal court, that orders it, together with various US Department of Justice documents that prescribe limits on data collection generally.
It also is stated almost universally that it is clearly unconstitutional. That raises the question of whose rights are being violated. The data in question are records collected by the carriers, for business and system management purposes, of services they provided for their customers. It appears that case law, going back quite a few years, generally supports the notion that the customer has no special rights pertaining to it, so it may be the carrier's rights that are infringed. And, indeed, it is upon the carriers that the warrants are served, which makes sense as they are the only ones other than the mostly unknown customers who have the records. There may be laws requiring the carriers to stand in for their customers in such matters, but I would guess not. We may wish to consider some, but I would expect the RIAA and MPAA to fight against that to the bitter end.
I'm enough of a First Amendment hardliner to dismiss the whines about corporations not being people, but still find it a bit of a stretch to think of Section 215 as a restraint on freedom of speech or of the right to assemble and petition the government. And although I also support the EFF, I think it might be more useful to do the latter and address the issue with Senators and Congressmen directly, as they presently seem open to that, at least for public relations purposes.
Since they seem to work mostly for the yanks, why not privatise these scaremongers and suckers on the public teat? 34 attacks prevented? Where is the evidence? My anti-tiger-attack rock has stopped thousands of tiger attacks. And I have the lack of attacks to prove it.
Surely Capita would be interested.
"To protect freedom it became necessary to destroy it."
". And, indeed, it is upon the carriers that the warrants are served"
But, there are not even warrants for this, data is collected in bulk then analyzed. FISA themselves found this style of program unconstitutional in 2008 (the NSA just disagreed and kept doing it.) Now in 2013 FISA claim it's fine. A recent audit (2012) the NSA did on themselves (Snowden leak) found 2,776 FISA violations in one year, just in the DC area operations alone. On the positive side this does indicate they audit use of these systems.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
