back to article NSA can keep illegally spying on Americans into November

The NSA can continue its illegal spying on Americans for one final month after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that wanted it shut down immediately. The New York Appeals Court declined to block the surveillance program, which is due to be overhauled by the end of November, because the US Congress had already approved a " …

  1. Mark 85

    Make sense of this for me, will yer?

    Assume the NSA owns the judges and assume that they own anyone in power. They are the new form of J. Edgar Hoover and his private files.

    Would that make sense?

    1. asdf

      Re: Make sense of this for me, will yer?

      No simply assume federal judges usually got where they are at by not rocking the boat in regards to the powerful and sucking the right dicks. Considering most are ambitious shit heads looking to climb further, things like doing the right thing or following the constitution only apply if they don't upset anyone powerful. Someday they will be on the SCOTUS after all and so avoiding controversy and litmus tests is key.

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Make sense of this for me, will yer?

      You've read that book by Robert Ludlum, haven't you?

      1. asdf

        Re: Make sense of this for me, will yer?

        Actually what immediately came to mind was the smarmy federal judge wannabe in the movie Kiss of Death (1995). Crap movie but that character is spot on.

  2. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    "Balance"

    First, regarding the comment from TFA about Congress "balancing" privacy and national security. Keep in mind any time ANYBODY in power says they want to "balance" your rights that means they are taking them away.

    "Assume the NSA owns the judges and assume that they own anyone in power. "

    Well, once factor here, the US effectively has a one-party system. Both main political parties favor a large, expensive government (while blaming the "other" party for overspending); both main political parties gave lip service about worrying about surveillance while tripping over each other to pass spying laws; both main political parties have had no problem "balancing" (i.e. taking away) people's civil rights. You've got this bizarre situation now where religious nut-jobs (who would have their own party in a functional multi-party system) and tea-partiers (who would have their own party in a functional multi-party system) and so-called "conservatives" (the traditional Republicans) all are trying to take over a single party. (Democrats seem to have avoided this problem, but honestly like it or not they're almost politically identical to the Republicans they claim to oppose so much.) The reason for this? The political polling system is totally broken, some people in the old-school media select people to put on the poll, and the polls have NO choice for "none of the above" (and a chance to specify a name). So 3rd-party candidates (or main-party candidates the media does not select) will NOT be on the polls. There've been cases the last 10 or 20 years where a candidate got 20% of the vote while not being on the polls at all! Again, the solution is as simple as requiring a "somebody else" choice on polls.. so if no-one else gets significant polling it might just end up being "1% other" but if the poll-creators miss some viable candidate they'll show up on the poll anyway (and maybe they'll be added to later polls as a direct choice.)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Be careful what you ask for...

    ...as you might be very unhappy or dead when you get it.

  4. Pliny the Whiner

    When I woke up this morning, I thought about what a comfort it would be to me to have a bunch of anonymous dickheads crawling up my ass and getting into my business for another month. Yes, here in America, a little girl's dreams still come true. And mine too, apparently.

  5. AustinTX

    It's all OK since they've agreed to stop spying eventually

    It's all OK, since they've agreed to stop spying eventually, and since they haven't (yet) refused to stop upon arrival of that date, there is no offense to address yet! All legal-beagle!

    Only a terrorist would make an observation such as "if I promise to stop killing kittens 100 years from now, then it's like I have a 100-year license to keep killing them." Amurcah!!!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pfft..

    So in 1981 Ken Thompson publishes a paper on Microcode Bugs in the compiler, his own OS from the artificial intelligence labs (key point) never having more than one CVE or critical vulnerability exposure in its entire life-time. Then in 1983 a communist sympathiser and hippy leaves those same labs and gives everyone the GNU with a broken tcp/ip stack and the bash shell from Microsoft saying he's giving us all unix for free and the Bugs or CVE's just don't stop coming!

    Lmao, "We marvelled at our own ingenuity as we gave birth to A.I" (Morpheus)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so what happens is this:

    the program name acronym is changed. so whatever program they were told to desist, stops. Managers are reassigned. new program with new name starts up with almost if not all the same abuses going on, same resources or even newer stuff under a newer and more well concealed budget.

    things don't change they just scuttle under another rock.

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