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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'I Have Been to the Darkest Corners of Government, and What They Fear Is Light'
The Snowden Saga Begins: “I Have Been to the Darkest Corners of Government, and What They Fear Is Light”
by Glenn Greenwald
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 by TomDispatch
EXCERPT...
The email began: “The security of people’s communications is very important to me,” and its stated purpose was to urge me to begin using PGP encryption so that “Cincinnatus” could communicate things in which, he said, he was certain I would be interested. Invented in 1991, PGP stands for “pretty good privacy.” It has been developed into a sophisticated tool to shield email and other forms of online communications from surveillance and hacking.
The ruling I read on the plane to Hong Kong was amazing for several reasons. It ordered Verizon Business to turn over to the NSA “all call detail records” for “communications (i) between the United States and abroad; and (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.” That meant the NSA was secretly and indiscriminately collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans, at least. Virtually nobody had any idea that the Obama administration was doing any such thing. Now, with this ruling, I not only knew about it but had the secret court order as proof.
SNIP...
Shortly before landing, I read one final file. Although it was entitled “README_FIRST,” I saw it for the first time only at the very end of the flight. This message was an explanation from the source for why he had chosen to do what he did and what he expected to happen as a result -- and it included one fact that the others did not: the source’s name.
"I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end. I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed for even an instant. If you seek to help, join the open source community and fight to keep the spirit of the press alive and the internet free. I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.
Edward Joseph Snowden, SSN: *****
CIA Alias “***** ”
Agency Identification Number: *****
Former Senior Advisor | United States National Security Agency, under corporate cover
Former Field Officer | United States Central Intelligence Agency, under diplomatic cover
Former Lecturer | United States Defense Intelligence Agency, under corporate cover"
SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/13
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WillyT
(72,631 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)
Greenwald: From MLK to Anonymous, the State Targets Dissenters Not Just "Bad Guys"
Don't believe the argument that mass surveillance is only a problem for wrongdoers. Governments have repeatedly spied on anyone who challenges their power
by Glenn Greenwald
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 by The Guardian
The following is an excerpt, as it appeared in The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday, from Glenn Greenwald's latest book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, published on May 13, 2013 by Hamish Hamilton:
A prime justification for surveillance – that it's for the benefit of the population – relies on projecting a view of the world that divides citizens into categories of good people and bad people. In that view, the authorities use their surveillance powers only against bad people, those who are "doing something wrong", and only they have anything to fear from the invasion of their privacy. This is an old tactic. In a 1969 Time magazine article about Americans' growing concerns over the US government's surveillance powers, Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, assured readers that "any citizen of the United States who is not involved in some illegal activity has nothing to fear whatsoever".
The point was made again by a White House spokesman, responding to the 2005 controversy over Bush's illegal eavesdropping programme: "This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people." And when Barack Obama appeared on The Tonight Show in August 2013 and was asked by Jay Leno about NSA revelations, he said: "We don't have a domestic spying programme. What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack."
For many, the argument works. The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those "doing wrong" – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. "Doing something wrong" in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.
The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover's FBI, they were all "doing something wrong": political activity that threatened the prevailing order.
SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/13
Gee, WillyT. Wonder what all our posts make us?
grasswire
(50,130 posts)
Vattel
(9,289 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)And Thank You !!!
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)(I've been staying out of this whole issue...too much agitated surrounding both sides....good article, though. The McCarthy era was only one example of what could go wrong....)
But, the conundrum I see is that there is a huge issue with privacy rights, and gov't info collection, while at the very same time, we're microscopically dissected, categorized and saved in multitudinous corporate data bases.
Our information, location and discussions are collected and up for sale through the marketplace. And anyone who's fairly tech-literate can find info on someone else.
The wariness just seems unbalanced, I guess.
merrily
(45,251 posts)When you sign up for social media, you are given a disclosure agreement to "sign." Most of us don't read them, but we "signed them when we joined up.
Also, the Constitution is the one document on which this nation is founded, the one that, at the insistence of voters in 1789 (few as there were then), includes a bill of rights, the one thing that gives us rights against the federal government. It is our one contract with the government. I don't have any comparable agreement with FaceBook or Twitter.
The Constitution provides a method for dropping provisions from the Bill of Rights, for rendering them null and void. (And, if something depends on the graces of the USG, it's not a right at all.) That method is Constitutional amendment. Rather than use the method to which the USG agreed, the USG instead decided it could drop provisions out of the Bill of Rights whenever it yelled "Terror" or "national security." And, not only that, but could do so secretly, without so much as notifying the people who pay the bills.
It really is your country and it should be your government. If nothing, not even the Constitution, is hindering the USG, we are not a constitutional republic. I am not sure what we are, but it is not a constitutional republic, or a constitutional anything.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Is what I'm getting at. It's so easily available. And their "contracts" we sign are completely one-sided in their right to use our info.
The corporate spying is more pernicious than the NSA.
That's how it seems to me, anyway. (This is not my area of study, in case that's not already clear.)
merrily
(45,251 posts)You don't have to use Facebook, Twitter or any website. You don't even have to use the internet. I cannot avoid the USG, no matter what I do. And it's not only the NSA. It's also things like the security cameras and mikes on my street, that Homeland Security money helps to put there.
The corporate spying is more pernicious than the NSA.
Disagree on both counts. First, it's not spying if you give them the info after they tell you what they will use it for. We give websites info, after they tell us that they plan to use it. That's on us. Not reading their disclosures? Also on us. The USG, on the other hand, did not give us the option of ignoring its disclosures. And, as already stated, we cannot avoid the USG.
Corporations spend big bucks (of their own money) to spy on each other, but no corporation spends what the NSA spends (of our own money) to spy on us. If they did, we could sue for invasion of privacy or some such.
And, of course, your reply omitted the most important point that I mentioned, namely the Constitution.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Very helpful, since as I said, this isn't my field.
I didn't say anything about the Constitution explanation because I was "in learning mode". Didn't have much to say other than, "oh...hmmm...lots of info there, worth thinking about, thanks." I was impressed, to be honest, but didn't want to fawn.
I guess I should have? It's a hard call, sometimes.
I do not understand what I said that earned the snark.
merrily
(45,251 posts)What does fawning have to do with it? I have no need or desire to be fawned over.
I'm sorry, but I am totally lost.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)''And, of course, your reply omitted the most important point that I mentioned, namely the Constitution." <----that reads as snark to me. I see a lot of snark around here that's worded in just the same way.
and what I said about fawning----because I thought my first reply to you was perfectly cordial and in fact appreciative of your good info, I didn't like what looked like snark in return.
Hope that clears it all up.
merrily
(45,251 posts)because I thought the original version sounded snarky and I did not intend snark.
Nothing was wrong with your original reply.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)That's cleared up. Much better.
merrily
(45,251 posts)I bore you no ill will whatever this morning and certainly don't do so now.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)It prohibits the government from violating our innate rights, especially those listed in the Constitution. Marriage, for example, is also considered to be a fundamental right. Loving v. Virginia is the case in which the Supreme Court ruled on marriage. But if a right is listed specifically in the Constitution as is the right of our "persons, houses, papers, and effects,(to be free from) unreasonable searches and seizures," further defined as searches and seizures without a warrant based "upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The government is violating our rights -- quite a number of them -- with these NSA programs. The FISA order regarding Verizon for example orders Verizon to produce all of our records, all records without a warrant based upon probable cause. The order does not refer to an application of any kind for a warrant based upon probable cause, etc. No particularity about the place or person to be seized other than that Verizon has them.
Whether you have a right to privacy, whether the Fourth Amendment applies, depends on the expectation of privacy of the person being searched or whose things are to be searched. If I set up a password or my Yahoo account, I expect it to be respected.
You probably know this but the Bill of Rights prohibits only the government from violating our rights. Congress or our state legislatures can pass laws, simple laws, that protect our rights from corporations. It would be best if Congress passed such a law since it is unlikely that every state would pass one.
We could all sue the government about the violations of our constitutional rights, but the executive branch would claim executive privilege and exclude the evidence proving our rights have been violated. That has happened in the past. A few people have sued, and I believe that in at least one case, the judge stated that the NSA programs are quite likely unconstitutional.
Unfortunately, we have a crew of unscrupulous, corrupt judges on the Supreme Court. What good is a Constitution if you get scoundrels and corruption in all levels of government? There is no way to enforce our Constitution unless we win the hearts and minds of the American people and get them to vote for candidates who promise to stop these intrusive, dangerous programs.
merrily
(45,251 posts)I am not a proponent of the natural rights theory, bearing in mind that the alleged right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness with which all "men"--and he did mean males-- were supposedly born with was penned by a man who, at the time, owned many slaves. Maybe humans should have certain rights from birth, but I don't think they do.
Moreover, precisely which rights people have from birth seems to be a pretty subjective thing, depending mostly on the person speaking or writing at the given moment. During the health care bill debate for instance, I heard a lot of talk about a natural right to free or affordable medical care and I saw a post at Discussionist about being born with a right to vote. I wonder what good being born with such rights did prehistoric peoples, or even the relatively modern British, prior to the last century or two.
Although I am aware of the natural rights theory, my rather pragmatic view is that the only rights you have are those you can enforce in court. Prior to the decision in Loving--which was an interpretation of the 14th amendment, passed in the 1860s, people were not born with a right to marry. Or, if they were, it was certainly a right their owners or Jim Crow laws, or laws about prisioners, etc., could do away with at will. And thousands of generations of human were born and died before the institution of marriage was even invented.
So, I have no idea what being born with a right to marry--or any other right--really means, unless and until some law or, in our legal system, court decision gives you that right. I also confess to having little patience with the whole natural rights debate, which always seems to me to be a little like debating whether angels have genitalia. So, I try to avoid the debate whenever possible.
But whether we are born with rights or not, the Constitution was the first thing in this country that gave us rights against the federal government, which did not exist until the Constitution, sans Bill of Rights, was ratified. Even if we may have been born with had rights prior to that against the colonial governors or the British monarch du jour or the head of our Neanderthal tribe or the East India Company, or Miles Standish, or whatever. So, even in a natural rights context, I stand by statement, exactly as it was worded, in the exact context in which I made it.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)information might be sold could be your employer.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Hi JD. ☺
So, yeah, I just keep thinking, "hell, what's the difference? Public and private corporations and agencies have access to everything on everyone, so what's the difference? Of course our info is up for sale. It has been for ages..."
Not that I'm implying approval!
merrily
(45,251 posts)Doesn't matter all that much to the state if you are dissenting from the American right, the American left or some foreign nation, though there does seem to be a USG preference for the American right.
And, we can pretend that the Bill of Rights is limited to US citizens and most US citizens will go along with that without question.
So, maybe it does matter, after all.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)because they are so easily manipulated -- most of them are too stupid or too lazy to do any research so they listen to Rush so he can tell them what to think. It's why they went into the churches to gain power as their religion tells them to just believe and don't ask questions. It's why blind devotees to political parties, including Democrats, are so easily accessed -- their blind devotion makes them prime targets for turning them into stooges for the powers that be.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Candidly, I don't see universal resistance to manipulation on this board, or any reluctance on the part of the USG to attempt to manipulate the left.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)True lefties, and yes, I count myself among those, are people who do their own research and are not blind devotees to a particular political party or someone else's ideology. The USG doesn't attempt to manipulate the true left because we can't be manipulated. The Neo "left," however, are devotees to a political party and as such, will believe and advance whatever Das Party tells them to believe. They are particularly sensitive to anything negative said about their idols -- in this case, President Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and all the rest of the enablers of the NSA and the predator classes and that is their Achilles heel, easily exploited and easily manipulated. These devotees are no better than the blind devotees of the right.
merrily
(45,251 posts)that is another issue.)
I disagree that the government does not try to manipulate the left, though. It does try--continuously--; and it usually succeeds.
Take the Tsarnaev arrest. The brothers were between Cambridge and Watertown until the older brother was killed, then the younger, wounded brother was on foot in Watertown. A wounded, newly bereaved, leadeerless 19 year old, on foot in Watertown.
Seven cities and towns were closed down on a business day, all day, including the City of Boston. That was a form of manipulation, no? My "rebellion" consisted of leaving my building to get take out for lunch.
Bluest city in what is supposed to be the bluest state in America. Where was the rebellion against the overreach of federal, state and local authorities?
ETA: make that all night and then all day. I think the older brother was killed around 1 a.m. And, when the ban was lifted, the people flocked to the streets--to applaud law enforcement.
Hotler
(12,596 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)
KoKo
(84,711 posts)Introductory Comment On: "Glenn Greenwald, How I Met Edward Snowden"
by Tom Englehardt
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175843/
Make no mistake: it’s been the year of Edward Snowden. Not since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War has a trove of documents revealing the inner workings and thinking of the U.S. government so changed the conversation. In Ellsberg’s case, that conversation was transformed only in the United States. Snowden has changed it worldwide. From six-year-olds to Angela Merkel, who hasn’t been thinking about the staggering ambitions of the National Security Agency, about its urge to create the first global security state in history and so step beyond even the most fervid dreams of the totalitarian regimes of the last century? And who hasn’t been struck by how close the agency has actually come to sweeping up the communications of the whole planet? Technologically speaking, what Snowden revealed to the world -- thanks to journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras -- was a remarkable accomplishment, as well as a nightmare directly out of some dystopian novel.
From exploiting backdoors into the Internet’s critical infrastructure and close relationships with the planet's largest tech companies to performing economic espionage and sending spy avatars into video games, the NSA has been relentless in its search for complete global omniscience, even if that is by no means the same thing as omnipotence. It now has the ability to be a hidden part of just about any conversation just about anywhere. Of course, we don’t yet know the half of it, since no Edward Snowden has yet stepped forward from the inner precincts of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, or other such outfits in the "U.S. intelligence community." Still, what we do know should take our collective breath away. And we know it all thanks to one young man, hounded across the planet by the U.S. government in an “international manhunt.”
As an NSA contractor, Snowden found himself inside the blanket of secrecy that has fallen across our national security state since 9/11 and there he absorbed an emerging principle on which this country was never founded: that “they” know what’s best for us, and that, in true Orwellian fashion, our ignorance is our strength. Increasingly, this has become Washington's twenty-first-century mantra, which is not to be challenged. Hence, the extremity of the outrage, as well as the threats and fantasies of harm, expressed by those in power (or their recently retired channelers) toward Snowden.
One brave young man with his head firmly fastened on his shoulders found himself trapped in Moscow and yet never lost his balance, his good sense, or his focus. As Jonathan Schell wrote in September 2013, “What happened to Snowden in Moscow diagramed the new global reality. He wanted to leave Russia, but the State Department, in an act of highly dubious legality, stripped him of his passport, leaving him -- for purposes of travel, at least -- stateless. Suddenly, he was welcome nowhere in the great wide world, which shrank down to a single point: the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo [Airport]. Then, having by its own action trapped him in Russia, the administration mocked and reviled him for remaining in an authoritarian country. Only in unfree countries was Edward Snowden welcome. What we are pleased to call the ‘free world’ had become a giant prison for a hero of freedom.”
And of course, there was also a determined journalist, who proved capable of keeping his focus on what mattered while under fierce attack, who never took his eyes off the prize. I’m talking, of course, about Glenn Greenwald. Without him (and the Guardian, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post), “they” would be observing us, 24/7, but we would not be observing them. This small group has shaken the world.
This is publication day for Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, about his last near-year swept away by the Snowden affair. It’s been under wraps until now for obvious reasons. Today, TomDispatch is proud, thanks to the kindness of Greenwald’s publisher, Metropolitan Books, to be releasing an adapted, much shortened version of its first chapter on how this odyssey of our American moment began.-- Tom
------------------
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)in his post. I saved it as a good reference to verify what he was saying in his post. They are "hot links" embedded in his post that don't come through here on DU.
Hot links are in red to the news links, I think:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175843/
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Jon Queally, staff writer
CommonDreams.com, May 9, 2014
In a new policy directive from the Obama administrative, national security and other government officials will no longer be allowed to publicly discuss or even reference news reporting that is based on "unauthorized leaks."
President Obama once promised the American people that his administration would be the most transparent in history, but after years of fights with civil libertarians trying to obtain legal memos used to justify the president's overseas assassination program, an unprecedented pattern of prosecuting government whistleblowers, the targeting of journalists, and all the secrecy and obfuscation related to the NSA's mass surviellance programs made public by Edward Snowden, that claim is now met with near universal laughter, if not scorn, by critics.
According to the New York Times:
A new pre-publication review policy for the Office of Director of National Intelligence says the agency’s current and former employees and contractors may not cite news reports based on leaks in their speeches, opinion articles, books, term papers or other unofficial writings.
Such officials “must not use sourcing that comes from known leaks, or unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information,” it says. “The use of such information in a publication can confirm the validity of an unauthorized disclosure and cause further harm to national security.”
Failure to comply “may result in the imposition of civil and administrative penalties, and may result in the loss of security clearances and accesses,” it says.
Timothy H. Edgar, a visiting professor at Brown University, told the Times the ODNI directive is overly restrictive because it goes beyond telling officials they cannot comment on or confirm the accuracy of unauthorized leaks—something he thinks makes sense and is already covered by statute—but it bizarrely asserts that these people cannot even acknowledge the existence of a story that may have appeared on the cover of a major newspaper.
“You’re basically saying people can’t talk about what everyone in the country is talking about,” Edgar said. “I think that is awkward and overly broad in terms of restricting speech.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/09
Gee. I'd swear that the whistleblowers weren't trying to damage America's security as much as reporting on criminality on the part of the Secret Government.
PS: Thank you very much for the heads-up on Tom Dispatch. That crew and site are the anti-bomb, in a good, good way.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Or the "Greenwald is a poopy head" set.
K&R...
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Do they not post when they are not paid?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)I haven't been seeing any ignored's responding to my posts. 
Of course if they are BOG regulars or BOG hosts they are on ignore ...along with most that hang in history of feminism.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Although their liberal use of the emoticons suggests a creative spirit, usually it is no more than a mark denoting a repressive personality. It does make them stand out in a crowd.
Did you ever read "Oblomov" by Ivan Goncharov, zeemike? He sounds like a commie, but he wasn't.
That word is -- Oblomovism.
Now, when I hear a country squire talking about the rights of man and urging the necessity of developing personality, I know from the first words he utters that he is an Oblomov.
When I hear a government official complaining that the system of administration is too complicated and cumberson, I know that he is an Oblomov.
When I hear an army officer complaining that parades are exhausting, and boldly arguing that marching at a slow pace is useless, etc., I have not the slightest doubt that he is an Oblomov.
When, in the magazines, I read liberal denunciations of abuses and expressions of joy over the fact that at last something has been done that we have been waiting and hoping for for so long, I think to myself that this has been written from Oblomovka.
When I am in the company of educated people who ardently sympathize with the needs of mankind and who for many years have relating with undiminished heat the same (and sometimes new) anecdotes about bribery, acts of tyranny and lawlessness of every kind, I, in spite of myself, feel that I have been transported to old Oblomovka...
SOURCE: http://books.google.com/books?id=KVVK8Wra4iIC&pg=PA340&lpg=PA340&dq=goncharov+oblomov+what+is+oblomovism+country+squire&source=bl&ots=VnG99AI5Ln&sig=QR8Kkt8HiIoAqeMUl0DYWdYGkLU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fcpyU-CvM4mjsQTSz4DoDw&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=goncharov%20oblomov%20what%20is%20oblomovism%20country%20squire&f=false
The guy got it. I know you do, too.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)But then I know nothing of Russian literature...except perhaps Leo Tolstoy or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Immanuel Velikovsky...so as you see I am not well read.
I had to look it up on Wickapedia...he is an interesting person indeed...may just try to wade through that one, although there are references in it that are hard to follow if not familiar with the literature of the time.
But yes, there were many great thinkers of the past that get it...but so few today know of them.
silvershadow
(10,336 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)to fight for our freedom, instead of acquiescing to our enslavement.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)
Eloquent line by Snowdon, too.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)worthy of our founding documents. Eloquent.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)A million hugs to you, Mr. Snowden. 
Nay
(12,051 posts)here on DU is not a good sign.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)And, anyways, as I've been told over and over again, this isn't about him, right?
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
merrily
(45,251 posts)deflects attention away from the fact that the USG has been shredding the Constitution.
And, if you are a defender of this administration, or of the establishment generally, then deflecting away from the Constitutional issues is just about your only strategy.
As far as proof, only those defending Greenwald and Snowden on this board need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, as if DU were stricter than a court trying a capital case and the burden were on the defense, instead of the prosecution. Those who attack them, on the other hand, get to say and imply whatever.
I know you know that, but other readers still seem to be confused
Thing is, if this had hit the fan during the Bush administration, I have a feeling that the reaction from the left and alleged left would have been very different.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
merrily
(45,251 posts)There is something very creepy about everything being okay, so long as a Democrat is in office.
And, from the same people who never hesitate to post IOKIYAR.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Russ Tice revealed all this in 2005, at which point Congress practically broke its neck running back into session to make all of this legal.
merrily
(45,251 posts)If not what is your point about my post and that reaction of left during the Bush administration vs. this administration?
Or is it more deflection?
As a totally separate point, the differences between the disclosures during the Bush administration and Snowden's have been discussed here in recent months ad infinitum by people who paid more attention than I did. I am not about to search DU for those discussions, but you may want to.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)George W. Bush's administration broke the law, plain and simple, and Tice revealed that.
Congress basically instantly made those activities legal.
8 years later, Snowden appears and reports the exact activities congress made legal almost a decade before, and people flip out.
Is it really confusing why some people are skeptical of the reaction? We knew this was happening in 2006, 2007, etc...
merrily
(45,251 posts)Sorry, but posting with you is like trying to nail jello to a wall.
Um, Congress can't instantly make violations of the Constitution legal--and that still does not address the issue whether the left supported Bush then as some on DU are doing now with this administration.
Is it really confusing why some people are skeptical of the reaction?
Where did I express any confusion about anyone's skepticism?
I asked if the left supported Bush when the revelations were made as they are supporting this administration now. Simple question which you seem unwilling and/or unable to answer.
And, again, the revelations then were different from the revelations we've had. Or so I have read on many DU threads.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Courts may then weigh in and declare that activity illegal.
I'm curious:
What did you do in 2005 when Russ Tice revealed the extent of US surveillance on American citizens. Surely you reacted as strongly as you did now, right?
merrily
(45,251 posts)passes a law. Who on earth taught you that?
Sorry, but that is worse than Gonzalez's (or was it Dimson's) claim that something is constitutional unless and until the SCOTUS says it isn't. Both statements are equally bullshit.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)When in 2005 Russ Tice revealed the extent of NSA surveillance, and Congress rushed back into session to make such surveillance legal, you obviously protested, right? Because the issue itself is so important to you?
merrily
(45,251 posts)"completely."
Jello. Wall.
This is the third time (at least) I'm asking you if the left supported Bush in 2005 as it is supporting Obama now. When did you answer that one?
Besides, as you well know, what I did or did not do in 2005 does not alter the fact that our Constitutional Rights are being violated. When are you going to stop trying to deflect from that reality?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)GWB President, illegal surveillance, nobody cares.
BHO President, surveillance made specifically legaly, merrily is quite worried.
Hey, it's your world.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Well, yes, "desperate" is one, but not the word I had in mind.
And you've ignored my question for what, third time, fourth time? I've lost count.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Get back to me on Tice, if you want to be taken seriously.
merrily
(45,251 posts)It was in another post I made to you. Guess you didn't read. Not only did I give you the answer, but I told you in a subsequent post why my answer didn't change the violations of Constitutional law anyway. So, it was only a deflecting question to begin with.
And what will you have to do to be taken seriously by me?
Stop pretending I posted things I never posted, stop changing the subject, provide the link the "South China Daily" article, answer my questions, address my points, stop saying things about case law and constitutional law that are off the wall, etc.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)First, amendment can take place by a vote of two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate followed by a ratification of three-fourths of the various state legislatures (ratification by thirty-eight states would be required to ratify an amendment today). This first method of amendment is the only one used to date.
Second, the Constitution might be amended by a Convention called for this purpose by two-thirds of the state legislatures, if the Convention's proposed amendments are later ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
merrily
(45,251 posts)I also know how it is not amended: by an unconstitutional law of Congress or by a double secret unconstitutional act of the Executive Branch.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)If you recall yesterday or so, Feinstein published an e-mail from Snowden to the general counsel of the NSA. It concerned the legal basis for the NSA programs. Snowden suggests that he was informed that the basis for it was an executive order.
Snowden asks whether the authority of executive order supersedes a statute passed by Congress. The general counsel answers without denying that the NSA programs comply not with an Act of Congress but with an executive order.
http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-interview-brian-williams-email-nsa-general-counsel-2014-5
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/edward-snowden-says-email-released-by-nsa-is-incomplete/
Read the actual e-mail. It's hard for someone with no background to understand, but Snowden was cautiously questioning the authority for the NSA's programs.
Members of the Congressional committee that passed some of this legislation have criticized the NSA's interpretation of one of the statutory provisions that the NSA claimed justifies its programs. \
"p. Jim Sensenbrenner sent another warning shot Tuesday to members of the intelligence community that they risk losing all congressional authority for the National Security Agency's collection of bulk telephone records if his bill restricting the program is not passed.
Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, told Deputy Attorney General James Cole during a House Judiciary Committee hearing that Congress will not reauthorize Section 215 of the post-9/11 Patriot Act before it sunsets on June 1, 2015, if substantial reforms to government surveillance are not adopted by then. The NSA derives much of its surveillance power from that section of the law. He added that Congress would never have passed or twice reauthorized the Patriot Act, which he authored, had it known the full breadth of the NSA's surveillance muscle.
"Unless Section 215 gets fixed, you, Mr. Cole, and the intelligence community will get absolutely nothing, because I am confident there are not the votes in this Congress to reauthorize it," Sensenbrenner said. "And I can say that without qualification.""
http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2014/02/patriot-act-architect-no-more-spying-unless-my-nsa-reform-bill-passes/78164/
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)The alleged left are peeing their collective chonies because it makes their hero look bad.
merrily
(45,251 posts)We are judging to some degree by message boards. A lot of the left never heard of the Democratic Leadership Council. Some of the brighter ones may be awake enough to know that something has happened to their party to make them like it less. I don't think most are awake even to that.
Of the ones I know IRL who are awake, at least to the extent of knowing something is different, some have just given up on politics entirely.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)in 2002. As a lifelong activist, I came in all enthusiastic and raring to go. I started talking about the issues of the day -- common discussions on the internet, including DU, and was amazed at the deer-in-headlights look I got from these people. They had NO idea what I was talking about nor did they care. What they DID care about was jockeying for position to be Chair of this or that committee. Iow, I've never seen more INactive, UNinvolved people in any supposed "organized" group. By 2004, I was an Executive Board member of the California Democrat Party, an early organizer and HUGE supporter of Howard Dean and got to see, from the INSIDE, what they did to Dean and how they did it. I resigned all committee chairs and my seat on the E-board, and re-registered as "no party affiliation." I got to see from the inside, what the purpose of the major political parties are and it had NOTHING to do with Democracy and everything to do with blind support for whatever the party told you to support -- no matter how counterintuitive and no matter how heinous. You see evidence of it here on DU every day -- complete with Blue Links to Nowhere and the justifications for the most disastrous of right-wing policies by a supposed "Democratic" president that would make the most nimble contortionist look arthritic.
merrily
(45,251 posts)I went through a period of just not paying attention, just assuming that helping elect Democrats was all I needed to worry about. Then, I started posting on political message board. Not intentionally, mind you--I started by posting on a fan message board for a TV show and got sucked into its little political corner. (I should be more embarrassed than I am to admit that, but I am only embarrassed enough to type this sentence.)
That was still in my Democratic idealism stage though. Then, Obama showed up in Rick Warren's church and my eyes started opening. Not much, because I was still in the "well, he has to do this to get elected" phase. But, then, he got elected. It still took me a few years. Paradigm shifts don't come easily for me.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)The important thing is that we get here (ideologically speaking).
merrily
(45,251 posts)Not that the party changed, but that I had misperceived and/or misinterpreted events all along.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4943796
I emphasized "MAY" because I am still mulling.
merrily
(45,251 posts)the discussion.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4943796
The other link I gave you was the next post in that exchange.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)If you need me to tell you why someone telling China which of their systems we have compromised matters to me, I'm not sure how I can even answer that.
If you want the proof, see his interview with the South China Daily back when all this started.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Doesn't seem to do what you say it does.
If this is not it, a link to the South China article that you do mean to refer to would useful.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
merrily
(45,251 posts)Of course, no link will show us whether China was unaware of what the US was doing.
Perhaps Snowden had that kind of info, but I sure don't. And neither, I suspect, does anyone on this board
merrily
(45,251 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)we were spying on? They aren't stupid. They aren't living in caves.
We hire computer geniuses from China and maybe some from Russia.
I don't think they were at all in the dark about our systems and which of their systems we were spying on. They are probably laughing at the naive American citizens who didn't know their government was also spying on them.
alarimer
(16,779 posts)If the leaks had occurred while Bush was President, they would be big fans.
Obama is just as big a problem on the surveillance issue (see the Frontline Documentary for evidence) as Bush was. He merely continued the same thing, in fact doubled down on it, despite his promises to the contrary.
So they attack the messengers, rather than listen to the message.
alterfurz
(2,580 posts)...what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine. -- William Blum
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Dr. Blum notes we've been at war pretty steady since 1950.
(American leaders) are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html
Then the War Party's George W Bush gave us direct evidence at a press conference:
"Money trumps peace." Not even one reporter dared ask a follow-up on what he meant.
http://election.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3208027
merrily
(45,251 posts)you will still find yet more excuses when you find out what else government has been doing to you. -- merrily
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)
Historic NY
(38,363 posts)this puffed up bio.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)More than that, though, I am interested in learning what the Secret Government is doing to We the People and democracy, seeing how me and my fellow taxpayers are paying for it.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Silly us.
But as long as we are taking a turn, what "dossier" are we talking about here and when do I get to see it, too?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Why that matters so much: CIA fingerprints are all over the murder of President John F. Kennedy, a peace loving, human rights respecting, old fashioned New Deal get anything done to improve America for ALL Americans, liberal.
As a Democrat, a DUer and as a citizen of the United States, I was proud to attend "Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" at Duquesne University.
One of the important speakers there was David Talbot, author of "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years." As the founder of Salon.com, the man of letters also understands new media and its import for democracy and our republic.
David Talbot did not mince words in his presentation at Duquesne. He publicly named former CIA director Allen Dulles not only as participant in the cover-up of events concerning CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy, Talbot said Dulles was the chief architect of the assassination.
Mr. Talbot has worked for more than two years on a book that I believe will shake the nation's financial and political establishment to its core. Here are Mr. Talbot's words, outlining why:
...I think what we're going to show over the next few years is that Allen Welsh Dulles was much more centrally involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, and its cover-up, than Lee Harvey Oswald.
Fifty years later, it's finally time to give the man his rightful place in history. In his day, Allen Dulles was America's most legendary spymaster, the longest-serving director of the CIA. He took great pleasure in regaling the public about his espionage triumphs. But, for obvious reasons, he could never take credit for his biggest and boldest covert operation:
the killing of the President of the United States in broad daylight on the streets of an American city.
I hope that my forthcoming book, which will be titled "The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, JFK and the Epic Battle for America's Soul" will at long last give Mr. Dulles his due. As I say in my title of my remarks this morning, I believe Allen Dulles truly was the "Chairman of the Board of the Kennedy Assassination."
In September 1965, nearly two years after Kennedy was violently removed from office, Allen Dulles went for a stroll near his home in Georgetown with a young magazine editor named William Morris. The old spymaster, long since retired, struck Morris as an amiable, avuncular character until the name Kennedy suddenly came up in the conversation. Suddenly a dark cloud crossed the old man's brow.
"That little Kennedy," he spat out. "He thought he was a god."
Allen Dulles knew who the true overlords of American power were. (They were) men like him and his brother, not Jack and Bobby Kennedy. The Kennedys were mere upstarts in comparison to the Dulles family. The Dulles dynasty boasted diplomats and international bankers and three secretaries of state. The Kennedy clan, by comparison, was distinguished by saloon keepers and ward healers. When paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy was amassing his fortune as a movie mogul and stock gambler, Dulles and his older brother were running Wall Street from their perch at the world's largest law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell and creating a new global financial order.
During the Cold War, President Eisenhower outsourced the country's foreign policy to the Dulles Brothers, with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles serving as the architect of Washington's global crusade against communism, and Allen Dulles carrying out the darker chores of empire.
Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev who kept looking for a way out of the Cold War noose but found himself repeatedly checkmated by the Dulleses remarked at one point, "One shuddered at what great force was in the Dulles Brothers' hands."
The Dulles Brothers stood at the very apex of American power, straddling an elite network that connected Wall Street, Washington, big oil and international finance. John Foster Dulles was the ultimate counselor for that overworld that ruled the country's government and business, and his younger brother Allen was at privileged circles master of intrigue and subversion, its enforcer...
Mr. Talbot had a lot more to say about the Dulles Brothers, especially Allen Dulles as head of CIA. One of the most important things to remember, Dulles, even after he was out of office, continued to command the respect of people like James Jesus Angleton and Richard Helms, people he had promoted to their positions of power, and people who kept their knowledge of CIA assassination programs away from President Kennedy and the various government investigators who would later ask them about them.
Something I'm personally proud to add: Dulles and his brother are two of the main founders of the BFEE, a term Bartcop coined and I borrow to denote the War Party affiliated with the right wing Wall Street crowd that infested Washington for much of the late 19th and 20th century. Allen Dulles was a good friend and business associate of Prescott Sheldon Bush, Sr.
During the Depression, they tried to overthrow FDR. Before and during World War II, they did business with Hitler. After the war, they imported NAZIs to help fight the commies and build up a case for the Military Industrial Complex. They've done a lot since, from Vietnam to Iraq.
Where does DU fit in all of this? DU serves to spread the truth about the government and how its secret services operate in service to wealth before service to the People. That's not only un-democratic, that's fascistic.
CONTINUED...
Talbot's book is going to be literary dynamite. More of what he said at Duquesne...
...Dulles had even less respect for Jack Kennedy's authority than he did for FDR's.
After he was fired from the CIA by Kennedy, Dulles continued to meet with a steady stream of top- and mid-level CIA officials at his home in Georgetown. The two-story brick house on Q-Street became the seat of a sort of government in exile.
Among those Dulles remained in contact with were a number of CIA officials who later came under suspicion for the assassination of President Kennedy, including Jim Angleton and many of his aides, (including) Bill Harvey and Howard Hunt. Over the years, Harvey in particular has aroused strong suspicions.
John Whitten, the CIA official who was originally charged with the agency's investigation of the (John F.) Kennedy assassination, would later tell the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 that Harvey was a likely suspect in the case. Robert Blakey, the committee's chief counsel, and his investigator, Dan Hardway, came to share these suspicions about Harvey, but their investigation
ran out of political support and money before it could be completed.
Dulles gave Bill Harvey the CIA's highest medal and its most murderous assignments, including the Mafia hit or attempted hit against Castro. Bill Harvey was a creature of Allen Dulles' lawless and lethal CIA, a culture that operated with little governmental oversight and little respect for international law.
It was the kind of unhinged environment, where a man like Harvey could seriously propose recruiting mafia hit men, while on duty overseas, to kill members of a left-wing, democratic party, and then draw a gun on one of his own deputies, when the deputy objected on moral and legal grounds. It was the deputy, by the way, who was withdrawn back to Langley, and not Harvey, whose CIA career kept careening out of control for several more years.
Allen Dulles continued to meet with a variety of other sketchy characters when he was in so-called retirement in 1962 and 1963, including (with) Cuban exile leader Paulino Sierra Martinez, who was closely tied in with the Mafia. Dulles also met with -- thank you, Joan Mellen, for this -- also met with Philippe de Vosjoli, the head of French intelligence in Washington and a close associate of Jim Angleton. Dulles asked de Vosjoli to investigate the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba and report back to the CIA.
Now these are the activities not of a man who has gracefully accepted retirement and is puttering around his garden. This is the calendar of a man who still thinks he is running the show.
Allen Dulles himself makes another curious appearance in the Kennedy story in spite of his so-called retirement. In the fall of 1963, he went on a promotional tour for his memoire, "The Craft of Intelligence,” stopping over in Dallas for two days at the end of October.
On that fateful Friday, November 22nd, 1963, Dulles interrupted his book tour when he got the news
from Dallas. Thank you, Lisa Pease for this: Dulles did not go home when he heard the news. According to his own day calendar, Dulles went to something called the Farm.
I wanted to make sure the Farm was not a family retreat. I interviewed people close to Dulles, including his own daughter; and she had never heard of the Farm. But, the Farm we know was the term given (to) a secure CIA facility located on the Camp Perry Military Reservation near Williamsburg, Virginia.
In 1972, a local newspapar reported that the cia used the facility to, among other things, train assassins.
So, even though he had no longer -- he no longer had any official reason to be there, Dulles spent the entire weekend (of the assassination) at the CIA's facility, the farm.
During that eventful weekend, of course, Kennedy's body was flown back to Washington and subjected to a controversial autopsy. That same weekend, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator and hustler, whom Robert Kennedy's Justice Department investigators quickly connected to the Mafia, shot down accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, conveniently silencing him forever. And throughout that fateful weekend, the grief stricken Attorney General made a series of frantic inquiries into the murder of his brother.
We know from the nature of these inquiries that Bobby Kennedy immediately suspected his brother was the victim of the CIA and the Mafia, the intelligence agency's junior partner in the murder business.
in other words, Robert Kennedy, the nation's top lawman and the president's devoted protector, a man who had spent much of his own life investigating the dark side of American power, immediately concluded that his brother had been the victim of the same CIA killing machine that had been directed at Fidel Castro and other world leaders deemed trouble.
This machine, built by Allen Dulles in the 1950s, had essentially been brought home to kill the President of the United States. It was a killing machine comprised of contract assassins, cut-outs, underworld operators and other unsavory types and overseen by the Ivy League swashbucklers whom Dulles had recruited to enforce U.S. interests around the world...
PS: There's a ton more from the presentation, including stuff from three of the people Talbot thanked or mentioned. Details on that are at the link to the OP at the very top.
H2O Man
(76,081 posts)is known as a legend.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Historic NY
(38,363 posts)more like secret squirrel.
yodermon
(6,151 posts)of tens of millions of Americans, at least."
Metadata. Legal. Has been since 1979 (Smith v. Maryland).
It shouldn't be, of course.
Distant Quasar
(142 posts)There are also the sheer scale, indiscriminate nature and secrecy of the NSA data gathering to consider. And the fact that the program was/is being run by a spy agency originally created to gather intelligence on foreign enemies, operating with questionable oversight and accountability to the public, and technical capabilities ever so slightly beyond those of the Baltimore police.
merrily
(45,251 posts)But, I am really interested to know how the poster happened to come up with the name of a 1979 case for this thread.
And why.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Smith v. Maryland is a case involving a warrant targeting the public telephone usage by a single individual suspected of a crime. Applying this as precedent to the wholesale collection, analysis and storage of private phone data for millions of persons not suspected of any crime is problematic.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Distinguishable like bananas are distinguishable from watermelons.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Claiming that Smith v. Maryland disposes of issue of what the NSA is now doing is downright dishonest. I don't doubt the poster's sincerity, though.
That is why I asked the poster where he or she happened upon the case name. Most people I know, even lawyers, don't go around with case names and dates at the tip of their tongues.
I am going to be very interested in that answer (if I get one. If I don't, that may say something as well.)
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)In contrast, if the government eavesdropped on the content of even a single telephone call without a warrant, that would be a violation of the Fourth Amendment, even though virtually every American would place a much higher value on the private details revealed by the sum total of the metadata that they generate.
At the time Smith v. Maryland was decided, the courts did not anticipate this seemingly absurd result, in part because the case was decided prior to the era of cheap data storage, modern computing power, and sophisticated network analysis. "It is not possible to argue honestly that the facts of Smith are anything like the NSA’s bulk data collection," Jim Harper argued at the Cato Institute's blog. "The police had weighty evidence implicating one man. The telephone company voluntarily applied a pen register, collecting analog information about the use of one phone line by that one suspect. I can’t think of a factual situation that could be at a further extreme than NSA’s telephone calling surveillance program."
merrily
(45,251 posts)I am too lazy (and hungry for lunch) right now to look again, but Ithink there was also a warrant as to that one individual. Not a FISA court warrant, either.
If I am correct about the warrent, that would mean that law enforcement had convinced a court that it had reasons to surveill that specific individual, the key words being "individual" and "reasons."
I know of no earthly reason for law enforcement to surveill me. And, if I know of no reason, there are no legit reasons. So surveilling me would be, well, unreasonable. Yet I am under constant surveillance.
And, I am still curious to know who claimed that this case disposed of the issue of the constitutionality of metadata collection and why a poster has the name and date of a 1979 case at their fingertips of a Wednesday morning.
BTW, I will take this opportunity to let you know that I appreciate your posts very much.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)There is so much effort expended on this forum to justify what the NSA is doing, when it is clear that bulk surveillance is incompatible with democracy.
Some more useful links:
Judge Richard Leon's ruling that the NSA's metadata collection is unconstitutional:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/17/us/politics/17nsa-ruling.html?_r=0
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's opinions from United States v. Jones:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-1259#writing-10-1259_CONCUR_4
But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.
merrily
(45,251 posts)It's kind of a catch 22 now, isn't it? Since I know I am being surveilled when I post, buy something online, email, walk out to get take out, etc. --and even know I can be listened to when I whisper in my own home, I no longer have any expectation of privacy. Therefore, the government can constitutionally surveill me!
I find a lot of energy is expended on this forum defending Obama, period. If anything is perceived as even potentially reflecting badly on him, it gets defended, no matter what "it" is. Defend him against Republicans, against the "professional" left, against the "amateur" left, against other Democratic politicians, etc.
And, if the practice cannot be defended, attack the messenger. And, try not to forget the ROFL emoticon because... it makes every post more compelling and persuasive?
merrily
(45,251 posts)Scalia has mumbled (out of court) about the 4th amendment not being absolute and weighing invasions of privacy against the magnitude of the threat. He's also said that Courts are not capable of assessing the magnitude of the danger. That is bs. The Justices are brilliant. Partisan--all of them-- but not stupid at all. (Well, maybe Thomas. Who knows? He won't speak in court and he decides almost every case the same way Scalia does.) The SCOTUS collectively can assess the magnitude of the threat as well as anyone else.
But, the magnitude of the threat is not the be all and end all. I don't think we have a 4th amendment any longer. If law enforcement thinks you even may be a terrorist--and the definitions were expanded--kiss the 4th amendment goodbye. (And a few other amendments as well.)
And that should not have been done without asking the people to vote on an amendments to the Constitution that say, in effect, it's okay to ignore the Bill of Rights whenever you think I may be a terrorist--and you can define terrorist almost any way you wish.
Anyway, I get the feeling, if he had to, he would decide in favor of the govt, rather than risk being responsible. But, he'd rather not do that, either, so he thinks/says the Court should not have to decide.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)don't make things legal or illegal. Laws do.
TroglodyteScholar
(5,477 posts)That interpretation IS the law. That's basics.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)If that were true then any time an earlier ruling was overturned, or a court distinguished an earlier case from a later one, the law would change. But that is not what happens. The judge that recently suggested that he might rule that the NSA's collection of phone metadata was unconstitutional in spite of Smith v Maryland would be ridiculed if he suggested that he was considering changing the law.
TroglodyteScholar
(5,477 posts)I'm not misunderstanding anything. Until and unless a law is re-interpreted by a court, the current interpretation is the way the law is applied. For the practical purposes of the present, the current interpretation is the law.
A judge "considering changing the law" doesn't enter into it. Either a case comes before a court that requires examining the current interpretation of the law, or it doesn't.
If congress changes the law, there's something new to interpret... at which point the law will be applied as ultimately determined by the courts.
Congress just tosses a rough rock over the fence. The rock becomes a sculpture as it move through the judicial system.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Two hundred and 10 years.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)by saying that the "current interpretation is way the law is applied" and "for the practical purposes of the present, the current interpretation is the law." That's okay with me. So long as you don't confuse the law with the current interpretation of the law. Courts sometimes misinterpret the law (e.g., the FISA court butchered the business records section of the Patriot Act) and very often the principles that courts appeal to justify their decisions are too broad. That is understandable. The Court in Smith v Maryland could hardly have envisioned the sort of vast collection of phone metadata by the NSA when it was justifying its decision in a case of the police using a pen register to collect phone metadata from a single phone in the house of a suspected criminal.
merrily
(45,251 posts)with a court interpreting the Constitution--which Congress cannot legally do anything about.
Snowden's disclosures raised Constitutional issues, not issues of statutory interpretation. When the SCOTUS struck down provisions of the Patriot Act, that was it--unless and until the SCOTUS overrules itself.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)
very often the principles that courts appeal to justify their decisions are too broad. The Court in Smith v Maryland could hardly have envisioned the sort of vast collection of phone metadata by the NSA when it was justifying its decision in a case of the police using a pen register to collect phone metadata from a single phone in the house of a suspected criminal.
Regardless of what a court says in its opinion, any language used in a case that is broader than absolutely necessary to decide the case is considered dicta, not binding legal precedent.
A court can easily hold that current NSA activities are unconstitutional without overruling Smith v. Maryland because that case is totally different from this set of facts, aka not on point.
An anonymous poster flatly claiming that Smith v. Maryland disposes of the Constitutional issue doesn't mean that Smith v. Maryland actually disposes of the Constitutional issue. It doesn't, and not because of new technology, either.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)We have several kinds of law in this country, Constitutional, statutory and case law precedent. (And those break down into federal, state and local, but let's stick to federal for now.)
Courts overruling their own prior decisions do not typically phrase it in terms of changing the law, but that is exactly what they are doing.
When the Court decided "separate but equal" met the standards of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, that was the law of the land and state and local governments that wished to do so could legally have separate schools for different races. When the Court reversed itself on that point, holding that separate but equal did not meet the standards of the 14 amendment, it changed the law that it had previously made. Hence, photos of federal marshals walking little African American girls into school, enforcing court made federal law without endangering (more than necessary) the lives of the children.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)it does not change the law. You yourself admit that courts do not phrase what they do in such cases in terms of changing the law, and I submit this is because most judges are not conceptually confused about the difference between a ruling that attempts to accurately apply the law and the law itself. Brown v the Kansas Board of Education did not change the law (in this case the 14th Amendment). Judge Warren argued that In Plessy v Ferguson (I might not be spelling this right) the Court made an empirical mistake in thinking that education of black and white children in the USA could be separate but equal. The law did not change--the 14th Amendment required equality under the law. What changed was the Court's judgment as to whether education could be separate and yet equal under the law.
merrily
(45,251 posts)That does not mean that the Plessy decision was ever right morally, but it was the law of the land. Not every statute is right morally, either, but it's law unless and until either amended or struck down as unconstitutional.
But court decisions do consist only of interpreting statutes or interpreting the constitution. There are areas in which courts made--and make--law before any statute on point exists. That is referred to as common law and our entire legal system is called a common law system.
You yourself admit that courts do not phrase what they do in such cases in terms of changing the law,
No, it was not an admission, simply a statement that I volunteered.
and I submit this is because most judges are not conceptually confused about the difference between a ruling that attempts to accurately apply the law and the law itself. Brown v the Kansas Board of Education did not change the law (in this case the 14th Amendment).
You're right: Most judges are not conceptually confused about this being a common law system. Neither am I.
I would submit that common law judges don't say they are changing the law when they overrule a case for some of the same reasons that we don't save the sky usually appears to be blue. It is understood that, in a common law system, courts make law.
I find it hard to believe that you never heard the term "case law?" "Binding legal precedent?" Laws bind us legally, not merely remarks from the bench.
I am not sure what Warren meant about Plessy having been an empirical mistake. Plessy was grievously discriminated against, yes, but not in any way that could have been objectively measured or observed. In fact, the railroad car in which Plessy was made to ride was newer and better than the car in which the whites rode. (The kids in Brown v. Board of Ed. on the other hand, were in measurably inferior schools. Older, in ill repair, not equipped similarly to the white schools, etc.) So I would have to see Warren's exact words in context of the whole opinion to comment further on what he meant if he said that Plessy had been an empirical mistake (as opposed to another kind of mistake).
But, regardless, Plessy was the law of this country from 1986 until 1954. Hence, during that time, no one could prevent states from enacting and enforcing Jim Crow laws. Until Brown, Federal marshalls had no legal authority to march African American children into all white schools, etc. The 14th amendment never changed but then again, the 14th amendment never said anything, one way or another, about "separate but equal." On the specific issue of whether "separate but equal" satisfied the equal protection clause, Plessy had made new law; and Brown had changed it.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)I should have made clear that I was talking only about statutory and constitutional law. (My bad) I guess we will have to agree to disagree about whether judges can actually change constitutional or statutory law. On my view only a constitutional amendment can change constitutional law and only an act of congress can change (federal) statutory law. But I guess you disagree, which is cool.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)make or change law.
From your post
On my view only a constitutional amendment can change constitutional law and only an act of congress can change (federal) statutory law. But I guess you disagree, which is cool.
Whatever.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Just curious, though: how did you happen on the name of that 1979 case in this connection?
merrily
(45,251 posts)"probably" unconstitutional--and he was a Bush appointee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Leon
Scalia recently said it would be an intriguing case (if the Court decides to hear it--which is questionable). If Smith v. Maryland actually disposed of the issue, neither of those things would have happened.
Even if your claim were true, the NSA does not limit itself to metadata.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)to collect massive amounts of metadata on virtually every American and then process and analyze it in powerful computers and sift out what it was to look at more closely.
There is no court decision holding that the government has the authority to grab our e-mails or internet data when we rightfully believe we have an expectation of privacy because we use passwords maybe even encryption of some sort.
The Smith v. Maryland decision can be easily distinguished on its facts. The technological developments today change the effect of the government's NSA programs on our privacy and constitutional rights.
Der Spiegel has published a series of articles on the technological capacity of the NSA. It is frightening.
Here is one example.
ww.news.com.au/technology/online/der-spiege-nsa-spies-intercept-computer-deliveries/story-fnjwnfzw-1226791712472
There are other articles. You can search for them.
Here is a video in which a reporter for Der Spiegel explains the technology that the NSA is using.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025024250
SAAL 2 is the video. (SAAL 2 is in the right-hand corner of the video.)
Holly_Hobby
(3,033 posts)
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)
Stainless
(719 posts)which contain Cisco routers. They then take them to a facility where they are opened and spyware is implanted in the router. The package is then resealed and forwarded to the customer without their knowledge of what has been done.
Stephen Colbert featured Greenwald on his Monday show and Amy Goodman just now interviewed him on 'Democracy Now'.
Can our government be any more creepy and pathetic?
randome
(34,845 posts)A thorough journalist would have posed these questions:
1. How many intercepts are being done?
2. Is the NSA targeting citizens or foreign targets?
3. Is any of this approved by the FISA court?
But Greenwald will never ask these type of questions. All he wants is to make you afraid and to keep himself in the spotlight. That's why the worst thing the NSA can do to him is ignore him. He's starting to show his bitter side without being hunted.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Last edited Tue May 13, 2014, 05:39 PM - Edit history (1)
We are bound to each other, with each other, to form and re-form a government that is limited by the Constitution.
Nowhere in our Constitution have we or our forefathers agreed to the establishment of secret courts that issue secret orders that violate our rights as set forth in the Bill of Rights. Many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are intended to limit the government's ability to interfere or even know about our thoughts, what we say to each other, in other words, many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are intended to protect the privacy of Americans.
The NSA is violating the Bill of Rights. In my opinion to the extent that it is extending the authority and capacity of the government to invade the privacy of law-abiding or basically law-abiding citizens, it is violating our fundamental agreement amongst us to form a government. In other words, it is violating the spirit and word of the Constitution.
It is extra-Constitutional in my opinion. Read below what Frank Church said about the government's spying. The more I learn about the surveillance the more I question whether we are at all a "free" country, whether our government is legitimate meaning whether it is a government formed according to our Constitution -- limited and controlled by the all the people and not just a small clique at the NSA and in other intelligence branches of the government.
I'm not planning or advocating a revolution. But the extreme secrecy must either end or the government should just admit that it is no longer trying to govern according to our Constitution and that the American people are living under a dictatorship. I can't see how the fundamental and obvious conflict between the letter and spirit of the Constitution and the excessive secrecy of the NSA spying and other aspects of our government are compatible.
I trust the Obama administration. But I did not trust the GWB administration. And there may be future administrations that some of us do not trust with the ability to place us under surveillance.
A strong economy, good personal relationships, the ability to speak freely with others -- all those things that Americans take for granted depend on the dominance of a spirit of trust and good faith among us. To enter into contracts, to form a government, to enforce laws, to respect laws, we have to have trust. The surveillance reminds everyone and is intended to remind everyone that the person with whom we are having a conversation or eating dinner or sitting next to on a train might be an ENEMY. That destroys trust. That destroys confidence. And eventually it will destroy our economy, certain personal relationships and the ability to speak freely with others. And without that trust we can be neither a democracy or as some like to say, a republic.
I'm saddened to see how few people understand about the role of trust in a society and how government surveillance destroys that trust. Government surveillance of a people IS dictatorship. That is what it is. It is not democracy. It is not a republic.
SURVEILLANCE EQUALS DICTATORSHIP. Hope you enjoy your stay in the dictatorship.
By the way, who cares whether this is approved by the FISA court? It's just a court, except since its rulings are secret, it does not face the scrutiny of public opinion, of the voters' opinion.
The documents that Snowden brought out indicate that the FISA court has approved blanket surveillance without warrants or probable cause. That violates the Constitution. Virtually all the judges on the FISA court have been chosen by Chief Justice Roberts, and as I understand it, with maybe only one exception, they are all Republicans. That scares me more than anything.
No to secret courts of any kind. No to a secret court appointed by the Supreme Court without consultation with members of both parties (all parties) in Congress. No to secret rulings.
randome
(34,845 posts)Why won't Greenwald even pose that question? Doesn't it bother you that he isn't providing as complete a picture as possible?
I just saw him on the Colbert Report. Colbert has always seemed to be a little sympathetic to Snowden but he had to shout Greenwald down to ask him why he and Snowden are releasing information about our international spying operations.
The Green One had no good answer.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Yes. They spied on communications from the US to foreign countries as well as US to US communications. It's all in the Verizon order and other documents that Snowden/Greenwald/Poitras released.
randome
(34,845 posts)Sorry, I truly don't consider that to be 'spying' since third-party business records are not considered our property. Also since the telecoms keep this data on their own. Also since Carl Bernstein said it seemed to him that the NSA has strong safeguards in place to prevent abuse. Also since we knew about the metadata since 2006.
The IRS and the Social Security Administration have more information on me. I should know since I once worked for SSA.
Seriously? The metadata is the 'darkest corners of government'? That's unbelievable hyperbole. It makes my teeth hurt.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)computers intended to create a map of the connections between people in the US.
And when I put a password on a bank account or on my e-mail account, etc. I am expressing an expectation of privacy. The US government is supposed to respect that. When I have an expectation of privacy as to my personal data, the government should have no right to go in and take it without a warrant.
The third-party business record rule is outdated and no longer suffices to protect even a modicum of privacy. That was a rule made up by the Supreme Court to facilitate the investigation of crimes back when. I doubt that the current Supreme Court will over-rule it, but eventually that rule will be seriously modified. In this time of vast computer power, the business record rule permits the NSA and other government agencies to pretty much obliterate the Constitution's guarantees of a number of our basic rights. The business records rule may have worked well in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and even 1970s, but it permits too much invasive activity today. Far too much.
They can probably figure out how often you take a bath if they really want to. They could probably create a mathematical equation that would analyze your water bill and the cost of taking a bath, figure in all the other uses you might have for water and come up with a pretty reasonable estimate of the number of times you bathe per week. That's how invasive today's technology combined with a little math and a lot of business records could be. Under your view, that would all be perfectly legal. I find it to be a violation of our Constitution. Not that anyone cares how often you bathe, but . . . it is an illustration of just how invasive metadata could be in your life.
randome
(34,845 posts)But the way to start a conversation on this is not to steal as many documents as possible, skip out of the country and then give everything away to multiple media offices.
Powerpoint slides and Sharepoint documents! My God, to equate this to 'the darkest corners of government' strikes me as laughably absurd.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)documents. No one paid any attention much. Fact is, Americans trust that we have a government that would not spy on us as ours is doing. This spying places the government above us. It gives the government the means and opportunity to discriminate against us based on our religions, on our personal lifestyles, on our associations, on our lives in general. It is utterly abhorrent. How anyone not on the payroll of the NSA can defend the NSA surveillance is beyond me. In fact, I personally class those who defend it as either inexperienced and not very intelligent or NSA employees. In my view, there can be no explanation for accepting the extent of the surveillance by the NSA if you don't fit into one of those two categories. Stupid or complicit? Which is it? One or the other.
I am not asking you personally to answer that question. It is intended to be rhetorical. I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to ask the question. There are a lot of people on DU who have not yet caught on to what a great threat the NSA surveillance poses to our country.
And I do not particularly distrust the people who are carrying out the surveillance at this time in our history. They are probably well-meaning people. But the threat these programs entail for our future, for our children and grandchildren is worse than any threat we have known other than maybe chemical or biological warfare and nuclear war. I do not think that we can live as a nation among other nations without diplomacy and appropriate intelligence on other countries. But any attempt to do intelligence on Americans' personal data and lives within the US should be backed up by warrants from a normal court not a special FISA court and based on probable cause.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,389 posts)Firstly, those questions are to be asked, and have been asked, to politicians who actually have those answers. They just haven't answered properly. Don't you think Greenwald and other journalists taking up this story have asked those questions? ...if not directly then by implication?
Secondly, why are you Snowden bashers afraid of the truth so much? And this is only a glimpse into the "irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed for even an instant". It is just an instant small tiny window into the excesses of secret executive shenanigans. Its only the tip of the iceberg. But even that small glimpse that Snowden shone a light on is too frightful for some. The revelations were not military grade top secret, the United States will not go down in flames because of them. All Snowdens revelations will do is simply open the conversation on privacy vs. state security. Because if no one starts that conversation, and it remains in the darkness, there is no reason for the government to not only not stop wiretapping citizens, but to expand it. Case in point; Clapper retracting his lie about mass surveillance once the truth came out. Imagine a Republican administration with even more advanced tech as I'm sure as technology increases, it will be even easier to gather and intercept more and more of us. I'm sure all of us on DU will be targets.
And its such a ludicrous argument that he is doing this in any way to "keep himself in the spotlight". ITS A *%$# NEWS STORY! (And it should be even bigger). The point is that OF COURSE he's in the spotlight, whether he wants to be or not! So whether he's always dreamed of being a big celebrity or not, it has nothing to do with the story or how many papers put him on the front page. Or if this somehow strokes his ego. Personally I think its obscene to simply dwell on some kind of projected narcissism. You could make that argument about ANYONE in the news. Its silly and childish.
Believe me the NSA as well as the US government are NOT ignoring him.
The amount of bitterness in him, for the personal insults and abuse and threats he has gotten, is well below what I would expect.
"without being hunted". When did the US give up on catching him and silencing him?
randome
(34,845 posts)I believe in speaking truth to power but even more, I believe in speaking truth to one's allies. Like it or not, we are allies because we share certain fundamental truths, such as income equality and minority rights.
Greenwald was just on the Colbert Report. Do you think the NSA is actively hunting him? Greenwald's ignorant tweet about Nigeria shows he is determined to stay in the spotlight. His contention that he is saving 'the best' for a couple of months from now shows his true nature: that of someone trying to sell us something.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From my perspective, that's not all that democratic, let alone American.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Last edited Wed May 14, 2014, 12:57 PM - Edit history (1)
They are forbidden by law from spying on American citizens.
As for The Constitution? It's not a substitute for the Bible. It's been modified in the past and it can be modified now. What's so hard to understand about that?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
merrily
(45,251 posts)And that person is claiming, with a straight face, to be a "political ally" here.
Yeah, right. That sort of ally I do not want.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,389 posts)Some of those disclosures show we are decidedly NOT telling the truth to our "allies". At any rate "allies" is a Hollywood idea from a John Wayne movie. The real wars are fought in boardrooms of mulitnationals. And which ones use which elected (or not) politicians the best in order to reap profits in those countries. Many if not all of these diplomatic level cables were a small glimpse into the world of the .1% secret private highway where individual countries laws are scoffed at in order to do "business". And like I said, its only a tiny tip of the iceberg.
Either schizophrenic argument from the anti-disclosure crowd is laughable.
1. Snowden is a traitor giving away state secrets that threaten our national security
or
2. We've all known this goes on anyways, nothing new here. We might as well just accept it getting even more insidious.
Speaking truth to one's allies? - you are living in a fantasy where these communications are from groups that are speaking for average citizens who are defending the actual geographical borders of their countries, and with that the civil rights within those borders. Nothing could be further from the truth.
randome
(34,845 posts)Is this what Snowden and Greenwald are trying to do? Make international spying unlawful? Good luck with that.
And your either/or point is also laughable. It's been very clear that Snowden has done both those things. He has 'revealed' the metadata storage that we've known about since 2006. And he and Greenwald have gone to some effort to reveal our international surveillance activities.
As you'll recall, the first few months Greenwald had his hands on the documents, he made sure to publish one specific to each and every country the President was visiting, for the maximum embarrassment possible.
That is not speaking truth to allies at all. That is trying to 'make a splash'. Or, as Greenwald explains it, he's putting on 'a fireworks show'. The hard truth here is that much of what needs to be said and done about the NSA is getting lost in the theatrics attached to it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]
LiberalLovinLug
(14,389 posts)The point is that with technology getting smaller and more powerful, and with no pubic oversight, it is way too tempting for governments, if not this one then imaging a Republican admin. to use that knowledge to suppress dissent and blackmail opponents.
And whether you knew the extent since 2006, most others didn't or at least never had heard it confirmed.
Also "making a splash" is a long standing tradition in the protest movement. From Abbey Hoffman to Green Peace to PETA. Because we don't have a mega media machine ourselves, we have to find ways that we cannot be ignored. Without theatrics, sadly, many causes would have been shuffled off onto page 6.
randome
(34,845 posts)We can't expect Congress to actually and actively do their jobs, can we?
Our pundit 'intelligentsia' knew what metadata meant and how it was collected. They didn't make a big deal out of it. It's only when Snowden makes a public spectacle of himself that they climbed on board.
And Greenwald is only in it for fame and fortune. That becomes more obvious every day. Now Sony has bought the movie rights to his book. Good grief.
But, hey, we're in agreement on more oversight. That's where we should be focusing our efforts, IMO, and not spending more time with Breitbart-like screams of 'STOP SPYING ON ME!!!'
[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]
nikto
(3,284 posts)...without being spyed on all the time.
privacy is so anti-freedom.
Privacy is obviously incompatible with a free society.
And getting hit hard over the head with a baseball bat,
is good for your health.
Snowden haters are less-than-stupid.
It's empirical.
randome
(34,845 posts)Why won't Greenwald at least pose that question? I already know the answer but maybe you can come up with one on your own.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)citizens or not?
You can't trust anything the NSA says. Do you work at the NSA? Or have some inside knowledge of all their programs?
We know that the NSA has admitted to collecting metadata. I realize that a lot of people on DU do not understand and will not admit that independent analysts have agreed that the collection of metadata gives the NSA a better insight and understanding of every aspect of our individual lives than even taping, say phone calls from our home and cell phones. But it happens to be true that the fact that the NSA is collecting our metadata and internet information including financial information is a horrible invasion of our privacy.
I bought some shorts and tops today made in Pakistan. That means that some America, perhaps in an import company, communicated with Pakistan to order those products. If the person in Pakistan happens to have also had contact with someone who is on a list of individuals that the NSA does not like, then the person in the US who bought the wholesale shipments of the clothing is probably also on the surveillance list. That's how it works.
Any of us could be on the surveillance list. In fact the very fact that we post on DU, I suspect, may automatically put us on the surveillance list.
If Martin Luther King was on the list way back before today's technology made the list so much longer, you better believe a lot of innocent people who simply want to talk about how to make the world better by writing on the internet are on that list. Because most of us, no matter how traditional our opinions, probably communicate with someone who is on the NSA list. We have no idea what criteria really apply to qualify a person for the NSA surveillance. We really don't know. That is because the programs are secret and even Greenwald and Snowden probably don't know all the details.
The NSA surveillance is the seed for potentially the worst, most politically oppressive deprivation of privacy the world has ever known. It has not fully bloomed yet, but the seed has been planted. And we need to have Congress pull that weed out before we are all poisoned and silenced by it.
I do not want to offend you, randome, but I don't think that you have the experience in the world to understand what the surveillance of citizens really means. It is incompatible with democracy. We saw that in Eastern Europe. Surveillance of citizens to the extent that the NSA and some of our local police are doing it is in and of itself repression. It is in and of itself intended to and does silence speech and is for that reason and many others a violation of our Constitution. Government programs should not "chill," that is encroach on or discourage free speech. And surveillance does precisely that.
The Roberts court may not agree with me right away. But if my knowledge of history and my experience in the world (70 years of it living in 5 countries) is any guide, then eventually, if we keep our democracy at all, some event will occur, the NSA will be caught with its pants down so to speak, and Congress will disable the surveillance and control programs. They are incompatible with representative government of any meaningful sort.
randome
(34,845 posts)It is the job of a journalist to pose questions and seek answers, not to spread fear.
You talk about NSA surveillance 'is the seed' for abuses. As always, you're worried about what someone, somewhere might be doing instead of looking at the things we know.
The FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS and everyone else with access to a PC, basically, has the potential to take away your privacy. The only things that prevent that are the rules and regulations we put into place. And vigilant monitoring of those.
Fear of the unknown is not a good way to function day-to-day, IMO.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)"Fear of the unknown is not a good way to function day-to-day, IMO. "
What is wrong with the NSA surveillance programs is that they are based on a vague fear of the unknown. Anyone who associates in the slightest with someone they have arbitrarily placed on their list of suspects of something, we really don't know what, is suspect enough to be placed under surveillance. They collect massive, massive amounts of data on all kinds of people, the vast majority of whom have no inclination to do anything wrong.
The NSA surveillance is strictly governed by fear of the unknown. They certainly would not expend so much energy, money, resources and good will if they focused on known threats.
Our Constitution requires a warrant based on probable cause in order to obtain very personal information about and from Americans precisely in order to prevent our government from harassing us and gathering information about us without our consent and based on simply fear of the unkown.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment
The massive acquisition of electronic data on each of us is unreasonable and not "based on probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
There is no way that the massive collection of electronic communications data complies with the Fourth Amendment. And the Fourth Amendment is just one of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that the surveillance violates. The programs as applied to Americans are anathema to the American way of life, to freedom for citizens, to democracy or any kind of representative government. It is based on an irrational "fear of the unknown." You said it well. If my ancestors had allowed the fear of the unknown to decide for them whether to settle in new territories in the new America way back when, we would not be a country that stretches from sea to sea. This irrational fear of each other will ruin our country. It already is making everyone suspicious of each other and harming us.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)NSA helped tip off local police and showed them how to use info in court without it getting traced back to NSA.
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
WASHINGTON | Mon Aug 5, 2013 3:25pm EDT
By John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."
CONTINUED...
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc=932
"Concealing a tip." How is that not crooked? Like Howard Hunt and Watergate. I'd like to know the rest of the story.
randome
(34,845 posts)The NSA is forbidden by law from spying on American citizens. No one has shown that this is being routinely violated. Some say the metadata equates to 'spying'. I don't agree.
If the NSA is monitoring a foreign suspect's email and they find an indication of tax avoidance on U.S. soil, I would think the right thing to do is provide a tip to the IRS, don't you? What's so hard to understand about that?
It's a fine point to say this is unfair to whoever is hiding their cash but I don't have a problem with that, especially when it really is a matter of keeping national security operations from being publicly broadcast.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Is learning something new that hard to do?
The NSA unconstitutionally spies on Americans. Yet, you continue to say the NSA doesn't.
You are denying reality.
From a historical perspective, all that does is add an element of plausible deniability.
randome
(34,845 posts)Precision and concision is my game. How is the scenario I outlined above unconstitutional? It's like when the FBI gets approval for a wiretap. They can't listen to only one end of a conversation, can they? If a suspect calls a non-suspect and the FBI overhears the non-suspect plotting a crime, do you think they have the responsibility to do something about it? Or should they just 'unhear' that?
It's the same thing with the NSA. If they monitor a foreign suspect's email, they are bound to see something that doesn't belong to that suspect. What do you think they should do if they see evidence of a crime that is not associated with their suspect?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)One must conclude, therefore, that it is a deliberate tactic.
War is Peace, after all.
You are quite far gone.
No explanations possible in this case.
Talking to a chihuahua about nuclear physics would be a more meaningful conversation.
merrily
(45,251 posts)by Constitutional Amendment, not Executive fiat, especially not secret Executive fiat.
Why do you hate the Constitution?
randome
(34,845 posts)The Fourth Amendment has nothing to do with third-party business records.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
merrily
(45,251 posts)I replied to a post of yours, in which you replied to this:
{Greenwald revealed that the NSA has been intercepting} packages which contain Cisco routers. They then take them to a facility where they are opened and spyware is implanted in the router. The package is then resealed and forwarded to the customer without their knowledge of what has been done.
Stephen Colbert featured Greenwald on his Monday show and Amy Goodman just now interviewed him on 'Democracy Now'.
Can our government be any more creepy and pathetic?
What part of that is about records that third party businesses keep "in the ordinary course of their business," aka business records?"
randome
(34,845 posts)The question Greenwald will not pose is whether or not these interceptions occur only for legitimate foreign suspects. He implies that the NSA is basically intercepting every router that leaves our shores, which is patently absurd on the face of it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Aspire to inspire.[/center][/font][hr]
merrily
(45,251 posts)I have to wonder how those "foreign suspects" became suspects in the first place.
Moreover, I know of nothing in the Constitution that limits government's obligations under the Bill of Rights. The "rights" are actually more limits on government behavior than they are "rights." So, I do not find it unusual that a document written in when no one on these shores or in foreign was yet a US citizen made no exceptions on the limits on government behavior.
randome
(34,845 posts)...then we have officially become the United States Of Earth. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, perhaps.
And I totally agree we know too little about how suspects are identified as such. But we don't second-guess the FBI, CIA, DHS or anyone else to the same degree that we do the NSA. Your local police department doesn't need to inform you every time they send a detective out for an investigation.
In fact, the NSA is the only one of our law enforcement agencies that is forbidden by law from spying on American citizens.
I just can't get worked up about Powerpoint slides and Sharepoint documents that Greenwald is using to garner fame and money for himself.
Remember, he's saving the best for last. That is not speaking truth to power. That's a huckster.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]
merrily
(45,251 posts)And saying limits on what the US govt can do to humans makes us the United States of Earth is beyond silly. If you want to say that our other activities--butting in where we don't belong, drone killings in any country we wish, etc. have already made us the United States of Earth, that might be a meritorious discussion.
Sorry you can't get worked up about Greenwald, but nothing I've posted to you has anything to do with Greenwald.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Thank you for the heads-up, Stainless.
What Sen. Frank Church (Real D-Idaho) said about the NSA, way back in 1975:
“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
Sen. Church was an FDR-supporting, New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, I'm told to be sure, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Octafish/277
ancianita
(39,414 posts)
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)JEB
(4,748 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I'm sure Snowden will get a copy of Greenwald's book and can criticize or affirm depending on whether he likes and agrees with it or not.
End of discussion.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)I'm still on the fence about whether Snowden
1. Is as Greenwald perceives him,
2. Is a CIA asset using him to discredit the NSA, or
3. Started out as 2, but then "went native".
villager
(26,001 posts)n/t
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts) moondust
(20,671 posts)What "they" fear is not light but information falling into the hands of some bad guys and losing any strategic or tactical advantage it might have afforded.
Love the "us vs. them" framing, comrade. 
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)that confirm to the public the existence of an omnipresent secret state, controlled by the very few, bound by no law but its own.
Consider the internationalization of real power in this world, and the lack of institutional means to examine or regulate such power. Our global situation is akin to medieval feudalism, or more simply gangsterism. The military power of the United States is the primary tool for enforcement and self-enrichment by those with means. Best of all, you don’t have to be an American citizen to influence policies of the U.S. military. Just ask any influential Saudi Arabian, Israeli, or Chinese leader. Or various leaders from the world of organized crime.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)That's an interesting term that we never hear these days. Sometimes (and I hope I am exaggerating a bit here) I wonder whether organized crime has simply taken over. The NSA surveillance scheme is more like an organized criminals dream than like the dream of individuals who are sworn to uphold our Constitution.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)nikto
(3,284 posts)It's empirical.
America-hating nitwits are free to disagree.
Agony
(2,605 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Positively!
"Organized Crime" was suggested as a possible subject for the Grand Finale on a thread I should of bookmarked. All for that.
Yeah, see. Organized crime, see.
Unh. Whodda t'unk it? See.
merrily
(45,251 posts)
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)UNREC
QC
(26,371 posts)
merrily
(45,251 posts)mike_c
(36,438 posts)Sorry to disappoint you.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts) 840high
(17,196 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)
- K&R!blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)I say, you are traitors to this country and to it's citizens -- all in the name of cheerleading for your guy and blind devotion to a political party that has been ideologically dead for 25 years. History will not be kind to you.
I've ordered the book and, though I've yet to get through Elizabeth Warren's book and I still have "Flash Boys" and "Capital in the 21st Century" waiting I'm going to be on pins and needles until I can get to Greenwald's book. I also anticipate that, 1) the mainstream media will completely ignore it (he who owns the media controls the message) and, 2) there will be hundreds of books and thousands of propagandists released (they're here already) to try and discredit both Snowden and Greenwald and tell us how we shouldn't listen to the very important information they have to tell us. It's textbook Goering.
djean111
(14,255 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)They can't possibly all be paid posters, can they?
Still, it's the only explanation that makes any sense to me.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"To Greenwald's and Snowden's detractors and propaganists I say, you are traitors to this country and to it's citizens -- all in the name of cheerleading for your guy and blind devotion to a political party that has been ideologically dead for 25 years. History will not be kind to you. "
So if you don't approve of Greenwald and Snowden, you're "traitors"?
The OP e-mail is gobbledygook. Sounds like a line from a cheesy novel.
Edward Snowden, the self-proclaimed source of recently leaked top secret National Security Agency documents, has answered the first questions asked to him on Monday in an open-to-the-public live chat on The Guardian's website.
The second question, from The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, read as follows: "How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?"
Snowden stopped short of answering the question directly.
"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," he wrote. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/snowden-us-is-not-going-to-be-able
Snowden is the one who seems preoccupied with spying on other countries, which is why he's in the predicament he is today.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower#block-51bf317be4b0d3c14258337b
The Constitution is an American document.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023084875
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023035095
"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023242606
More "traitors" who believe Snowden should be prosecuted:
Susan Page
NEW YORK -- Former president Jimmy Carter defended the disclosures by fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden on Monday, saying revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies were collecting meta-data of Americans' phone calls and e-mails have been "probably constructive in the long run."
<...>
Does he view Snowden, now granted asylum in Russia, as a hero or a traitor?
"There's no doubt that he broke the law and that he would be susceptible, in my opinion, to prosecution if he came back here under the law," he said. "But I think it's good for Americans to know the kinds of things that have been revealed by him and others -- and that is that since 9/11 we've gone too far in intrusion on the privacy that Americans ought to enjoy as a right of citizenship."
Carter cautioned that he didn't have information about whether some of the disclosures "may have hurt our security or individuals that work in security," adding, "If I knew that, then I may feel differently." And he said Snowden shouldn't be immune from prosecution for his actions.
"I think it's inevitable that he should be prosecuted and I think he would be prosecuted" if he returned to the United States, the former president said. "But I don't think he ought to be executed as a traitor or any kind of extreme punishment like that."
- more -
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/24/usa-today-capital-download-jimmy-carter-edward-snowden-probably-constructive/6822425/
I stand with anyone who recognizes that one doesn't have defend Snowden playing Putin's tool to be on the "right side of history."
BLITZER: What about Snowden? Do you think that he committed a crime or he was simply a well-intentioned whistle-blower?
SANDERS: Well, I think what you have to look at is -- I think there is no question that he committed a crime, obviously. He violated his oath and he leaked information.
On the other hand, what you have to weigh that against is the fact that he has gone a very long way in educating the people of our country and the people of the world about the power of private agency in terms of their surveillance over people of this country, over foreign leaders, and what they are doing.
So, I think you got to weigh the two. My own belief is that I think, I would hope that the United States government could kind of negotiate some plea bargain with him, some form of clemency. I think it wouldn't be a good idea or fair to him to have to spend his entire remaining life abroad, not being able to come back to his country.
So I would hope that there's a price that he has to pay, but I hope it is not a long prison sentence or exile from his country.
BLITZER: You wouldn't give him clemency, though, and let him off scot-free?
SANDERS: No. BLITZER: All right, Senator, thanks very much for joining us.
<...>
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1401/06/sitroom.02.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024292659
Senator Blumenthal: prosecute Snowden, overhaul FISA courts.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023425884
Rep. John Lewis: "NO PRAISE FOR SNOWDEN-Reports about my interview with The Guardian are misleading"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023427908
From the beginning, it was clear that Snowden broke the law (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023439290). There was a point where even Snowden supporters accepted that he knew he broke the law. Snowden said it himself.
Fleeing the country and releasing state secrets did not help his case.
His actions since then have only made the situation worse.
Whistleblowers have been making that point, some in subtle ways.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023236549
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023035550
Of course, this is dimissed because they're also critical of the NSA. It's as if some think that you can't be against NSA overreach (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023002358) unless you support Snowden.
What's that line thrown out whenever Greenwald is criticized: Were you against Clarke when he went after Bush? Were you for Scooter Libby when he leaked Plame's identity?
randome
(34,845 posts)Powerpoint slides and Sharepoint documents are the windows to the secret government? 
The hyperbole blows my mind.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)The propagandists are the willing mouthpieces for mass surveillance, destruction of the Constitution, persecution of dissent, replacement of journalism with propaganda, and the driving of millions into poverty and despair.
Being involved by choice in this type of propaganda is incompatible with conscience and human decency.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Thank you, Le Taz Hot. Wish I wrote what you put down. Thank you!
Principles of Propaganda
GOEBBELS' PRINCIPLES OF PROPAGANDA
Based upon Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda by Leonard W. Doob, published in Public Opinion and Propaganda; A Book of Readings edited for The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.
1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.
2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.
b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.
c. It must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences
3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.
4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence
b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions
c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity
5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign
6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.
7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.
8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.
9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.
10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.
11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.
12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.
13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness
14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof
15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.
16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves
17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective
18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.
SOURCE: http://www.psywarrior.com/Goebbels.html
Göbbels. Göring. Same NAZI thing.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)From John 3
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Overseas
(12,121 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)
Quantess
(27,630 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)