US judge rules NSA phone surveillance program is LEGAL

reply to post by JBA2848


Wouldn't surprise me. I've poked my nose at some of the shenanigans that were going on when PRISM was established and found a few curiosities there as well. Do you remember that weird time period where we couldn't seem to keep an Attorney General in office and had like three in a matter of a couple months? Guess what got signed in that time period and, interestingly enough, the AG signature on that document has signs of being altered. I'd post a link to that one but alas, not on my computer, but it's out there and should be on the Guardian's site. I found that correlation to be really interesting along with the what they did after.

Reuters reports that Judge Pauley admitted in a decision penned in the Southern District of New York court that the NSA "vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States," but that no evidence exists that the spy agency abuses this program to spy on people without terroristic ties.

That's a total lie. There is evidence of this. My aunt is a defense attorney and knows that. Also:

Reuters: U.S. Directs Agents to Cover Up Program Used to Investigate Americans

They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics and limited monarchies derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

I am going to go ahead and leave in the Benjamin Franklin quotes.

There were other lies in the ruling as well.

He said the National Security Agency (NSA) programme might even have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

There is some evidence that similar NSA programs were in place prior to the 9/11 attacks, and, in addition to that, there is no proof for his statement.

But in Friday's decision, Judge Pauley, of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, said "the balance of equities and the public interest tilt firmly in favour of the Government's position".

How is it in the public interest to lose 4th Amendment rights? This is an opinion based on false facts, to begin with.

In his 53-page ruling, he concluded: "The right to be free from searches and seizures is fundamental, but not absolute."

Not absolute?

He also noted: "Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit.

"Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection.

"There is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks."

Well, I don't like that the corporations collect metadata, yet this is being used to justify something else I don't like? And the third paragraph is false.

Bad news, guys. But there is something I want you guys to notice - that bad tactics set the precedence for more bad tactics. This is why, as a Democrat, it is very important not to let stuff like this slide just because a "Democrat" is President. When the Republicans get back into office, they will have precedents set.

Pay attention - for God's sake, pay attention.


Additional Source: BBC

reply to post by darkbake


And I like this.

He also noted: "Every day, people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly-private information to trans-national corporations, which exploit that data for profit.

"Few think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection.

"There is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks."

So is he quoted the fact Facebook does it so the government should be able to?

Facebook was funded by InQTel a CIA company for $12.7 million.

reply to post by darkbake

Reuters reports that Judge Pauley admitted in a decision penned in the Southern District of New York court that the NSA "vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States," but that no evidence exists that the spy agency abuses this program to spy on people without terroristic ties.

I think the ACLU are the ones who filed the case.

If they seemed to have failed in presenting evidence, maybe they are in on a scheme to set precedence in favor of the NSA ?

If enough rulings go the "NSA way", then people might start thinking it's all OK and all the complaints are bogus?

Hmmm.

reply to post by xuenchen


There is evidence every body already knows.
Paula Broadwell NSA agent spying on Jill Kelley over David Petraus.
It seemed to make it to the New York area. Maybe the judge does not read the New York Daily News. But it was also in the New York Times and broadcast on just about every news channel.

www.nydailynews.com...

reply to post by iRoyalty

By my standard I say that the act of listening to someones conversation is an act of spying.

The judge says that the NSA doesnt spy on people that have no ties to terroism.

So by the judges own words and logic, "virtualy every phone call in the united states" has terrorestic ties.

This is exactly what I read in the judges paper.

-Alien

Alien Abduct
reply to post by iRoyalty

 

By my standard I say that the act of listening to someones conversation is an act of spying.

The particular case does not address "listening to someones conversation". It's whether or not I can collect metadata on you, which is what numbers you call, when, and for how long. THAT has never been considered private. Until the NSA started collecting it systematically, *I* could get your metadata, some companies would sell it for a few bucks and others would require me to use government letterhead. But that's it. No court order at all.

Hell, if I sweet talked them, I could get them to tell me who you were on the phone with in real time.

This is exactly what I read in the judges paper.

-Alien

You need to back up and read it again. Metadata is not conversation. THAT particular bag of hot rocks is yet to hit the fan.

Bedlam

Alien Abduct
reply to post by iRoyalty

 

By my standard I say that the act of listening to someones conversation is an act of spying.

The particular case does not address "listening to someones conversation". It's whether or not I can collect metadata on you, which is what numbers you call, when, and for how long. THAT has never been considered private. Until the NSA started collecting it systematically, *I* could get your metadata, some companies would sell it for a few bucks and others would require me to use government letterhead. But that's it. No court order at all.

Hell, if I sweet talked them, I could get them to tell me who you were on the phone with in real time.

This is exactly what I read in the judges paper.

-Alien

You need to back up and read it again. Metadata is not conversation. THAT particular bag of hot rocks is yet to hit the fan.

I see. And indeed you are correct. I wonder how they determon "terrorestic threat" with such vague information right?

Like you said there is more than meets the eye with this and the bottom part of the iceburg has yet to be seen.

-Alien

Alien Abduct

I see. And indeed you are correct. I wonder how they determon "terrorestic threat" with such vague information right?

Like you said there is more than meets the eye with this and the bottom part of the iceburg has yet to be seen.

-Alien

Ah. Well, how you do that involves a really fun branch of math called "graph theory".

But, basically, the way SOCOM does it is with relationship graphs (they use phone metadata, too...can't wait for THAT one to hit the fan, I don't think Snowden's got his mitts on that one, heh). You build up a huge data structure that indicates who knows who, and to what degree, from that data. And other data, SOCOM looks at Facebook, Twitter, FARK, "other web sites" etc to determine who tends to post to whom, how often, and if it's friendly or adversarial.

If you call or routinely communicate with someone, your relationship to them goes in the pot. Eventually, that month's run establishes a relation graph. Now you can relate comm traffic against the graph. I expect to see a baseline of traffic there, if you call your mom once a week, the data goes in the pot. Given enough time I can decide if you are behaving "normally" or not, if you have any relation to suspect "Achmed", if so, is he likely at your house, where you are likely to be and so on. Believe it or not, with a really populated graph and lots of metadata about you, your comm traffic, purchase patterns, phone GPS data is golden, and whatnot, I can make a really really accurate behavioral model about you. Creepy accurate.

reply to post by iRoyalty


2 months ago federal courts said it was illegal. Now the state courts say it's legal?

reply to post by iRoyalty


I wonder how long it will be before we have video cameras bolted onto our skulls?
Our three branches of government are bought and paid for!
We are all enslaved by our own fears! I always thought that there would
come a time when people would be willing stand against tyranny and
injustice but it seems we will just keep convincing ourselves that this is
all for our best interest because the government knows better then we
do!
We have forgotten that those whom rule over us are just as fallible as those that don't!
Maybe even more so for most because they have sought out the venue's of power
and will do anything to keep it!
So where does this leave us?
Well this leaves us scraping to survive in a more Orwellian society than any
could have possibly imagined before! This leaves us beyond any hope for reprieve
from a totalitarian world, which we have helped to create!
We can only hope and expect to see change of a positive nature when we can see
a more powerful entity exert that change!
Does a more powerful entity for change exist?
It does but it has no direction, no means to unify,
no way to justify and none benevolent enough to
lead!

reply to post by iRoyalty


So I guess this judge is not aware of the special units within the feds that call other federal departments and local police agencies and give them intelligence that they don't have warrants for garnered through these clean sweep intel gathering operations. ANd further there's also special groups within federal agencies whose job is to create plausible ways they could have actually gotten said information legally. ANd then taking it one step further and going into databases and files and FALSIFYING investigation reports and etc to make it look like this information was in fact obtained legally and not given to them by agencies like NSA illegally.

I guess he doesn't know that the FBI has been forced to admit that this is going on.

That seems to me to be pretty clearly a violation that would invalidate his reasoning.

reply to post by iRoyalty


My problem with this whole "NSA/govt needs to keep us safe with any means necessary" attitude by TPTB is that they created the problem of other people wanting to harm us here. You didn't do anything personally did you? No, me either. TPTB in this country and Central Bankers around the world create problems for common people and then say we need them to fix their own problems!

We will all be liberated and free when private central banks are a thing of the idiotic past!

reply to post by Miniscuzz


You bring up some good points. Granted with that volume, it would seem difficult to action in real time.

My guess is the collection is most likely not designed to be used as it happens. Instead it could be used as a library to reach back to when the "need" arises.

By "need" I mean if and when surreptitious leverage is required against anybody. If and when the goods are required against anybody. As the definition of terrorism changes, well now we have all the evidence needed to meet those goal posts on wheels. For the most part, the data just sits until required by any agency or the highest bidder.

That's my take.

BTW, as far a legality? The same people collecting are the same who help guide the decision on what is legal and what is not. The law means little in that case.

smurfy
reply to post by Miniscuzz

 

Can't quote all that, but thanks for your dissertation. However I don't believe a word of it.
BTW, 30,000 might just be a mite low, since NCTC say they own all the alphabets, and that's a lot of people. Even the idea of "the last decade" is dodgy since the NSA end of it has been going since 1998...a lot of water and events under the bridge there don't you think? Still there's nothing wrong with a little lateral thinking though.

Let's assume that every man, woman, and child in the world work for an alphabet agency. Say...7 BILLION people.

Even with that many people, it's an impossibility that they could review 650 BILLION electronic communications in any 24 hr period....and that's just the clearnet. There's easily twice that many communications in the DEEP WEB per day.

You claim that NSA "owns" all agencies. Tell me then oh Wizard of Smart, why did it take the Feds TWO YEARS just to arrest Ross Ulbricht, the head of the infamous Silk Road site? Know why? Because Tor is unable to be hacked by any government agency PERIOD....and here's the proof right from them:

"The Guardian just dropped a scoop about the NSA's attempts to infiltrate Tor based on—surprise, surprise—documents leaked by Edward Snowden. It details various different methods the spy agency used to peel away at the different layers of the network, none of which were very successful. In the NSA's own words: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time. … With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users." It adds that it can't identify a specific user on command."


Link: gizmodo.com...


You shouldn't be so condescending when there's smarter people in the room than you.

Have a super day shill

reply to post by Miniscuzz


www.washingtonpost.com...

Tor is funded by USAID and the USDOD. When you send that information out to bounce around. It bounced around government computers. They know who sent what where. They just hide that information from other countries in order to protect all those groups they say fight for freedom in other countries.

no evidence exists that the spy agency abuses this program to spy on people without terroristic ties.

This judge desperately needs to be schooled on the Fourth Amendment.

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.

Exactly where does it say that this right can be violated by the government as long as they don't abuse the information they gather?

Is it just me, or are judges getting stupider?

nixie_nox
reply to post by iRoyalty

 

Where in the Constitution does it say you have a right to privacy?

The line about being secure in your documents and effects. The government has no right to snoop.

I know I am late to the party, just to give my 3 cents (2 cents is no longer of any value in Canada; in case it still needs explaining)

I think the problem here is that it is easy to explain away that gathering ALL the information first THEN sift for terrorists is really the only logical way to go about it. Without a solid case brought forth, that explains how efforts are made to make sure this data could be used to indiscriminately to build personal profiles on every single citizen, then there has not been any reason not to do it.

It sucks, but I don't see how a logical, and credible argument could be brought forth. The number of dots that would have to be brought into court would be unrealistic. The case would take a half century.

This is a run away train...

reply to post by iRoyalty


Well then, that is just wonderful news!
For now, the U.S. Supreme Court, and Lower courts
through "Due Process" have the
ways and means to prosecute every Financial Terrorist
on "Wall Street". As well as access to all Illegal Foreign
Interest Bribery Communications on K Street and Beyond.

Hey! We got it ALL on NSA files, Thanks to the United States Taxpayers.
FOIA could potentially have a field day with this. Link: www.foia.gov...
May The New Wave of Subpoena's begin.

S&F to You, and Happy 2014!