26 ms·

NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

67 points by benologist 11y ago

paulajohnson 11y ago
What, again?
ericzawo 11y ago
Sure they will.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
caseysoftware 11y ago
> As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said. Except every time the White House has said "we're only doing X.." we find out later that it wasn't true so why should we believe them now?
SeanDav 11y ago
And the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus will be holding a press conference on Monday.
- fpp 11y ago
  "... and from Monday, the official language of the USA will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old..." (adapted from Woody Allen's Bananas)
ilamont 11y ago
As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said. "As required by law"? The government violated the Fourth Amendment and the director of national security committed perjury (1). As required by law, justice officials and prosecutors should have brought charges against Clapper and other responsible parties ... yet nothing happened. What makes the government think that we will trust them to investigate and prosecute anyone violating our rights in the future, "as required by law"? 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke-didnt-lie-about-nsa-surveillance/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke-d...
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Yeah, and are they starting a new program on Saturday?
- shermablanca 11y ago
  Not surprising to anyone who follows greenwald. Read his book With Liberty And Justice For _Some_
- rayiner 11y ago
  Where was it found the NSA violated the 4th amendment?
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    Oh, please. There comes a time when even you have to give up the legalistic approach, and just acknowledge plain fact. The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is. If you want legalistic, narrow (razor thin!) interpretations of all "rights", then they're not really rights, they're just something for lawyers to natter on about. Further, Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" becomes nothing but parody.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 11y ago
      > The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is. Even assuming that were true, I disagree it would be an archetypal 4th amendment violation. Privacy on the Internet doesn't exist as a matter of fact. Anyone who controls a router between you and your destination can see your Internet traffic. When you try to apply the 4th amendment to the Internet, you're not asking the government not to intrude on an otherwise private space (i.e. the heart of the 4th amendment). You're asking it to indulge a purely legal fiction of privacy.
tomp 11y ago
On Monday, the Pope will convert to Islam. On Tuesday, Elon Musk will start his journey to Mars. Wednesday, Isis declares peace. By Thursday, the static vs. dynamic typing debate will finally be solved. On Friday, king Salman of Saudi Arabia will donate all his wealth to charity. And finally, on Saturday, Elon Musk will land on Mars.
- gamesbrainiac 11y ago
  On Sunday, the Vim vs Emacs debate will finally come to an end.
  - Zelphyr 11y ago
    This sudden bout of positivity on HN is worrisome.
mtgx 11y ago
1) NSA shuts down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday. 2) NSA starts totally different and with even less oversight "aggregate" phone surveillance program by Monday. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email-analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-e...
digdigdag 11y ago
"Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died." It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation. If their reasoning is that the bulk surveillance program is necessary to avert terrorism, then surely they must have known or, at least, gotten a hint of what was due to happen on that day. Of course, it doesn't work like that. The NSA's "metadata" collection policies means that a great majority of the data they collect is harmless "noise". I can understand data collection when they have narrowed down their leads to a specific person or group, but the current dragnet they've set up is costing taxpayers millions to store and manage the data.
- trimbo 11y ago
  > It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel
awalton 11y ago
I'm sure this will go as well as shutting down the bulk email surveillance program did.
karmacondon 11y ago
There's no way to win here. If the government outright abolished the NSA at noon, there would be dozens of hn comments at 12:01 saying "Yeah, but did they really abolish it?" or "But what about all the bad things they did when they existed? or "They'll just do something even worse next". It seems like distrust of authority is just a part of some people's personality. Perceived wrong doing by the government in the past has caused them to distrust the government into perpetuity, even if that same government does exactly what those people demand. So why should the authorities listen at all? It's like a convicted felon who can no longer get a job or be part of society. Why not just go back to a life of crime? You're damned if you and damned if you don't.
- woodman 11y ago
  Wow, I don't know that I've seen such a perfect example of Battered Woman Syndrome outside of a rerun of Cops. By "Perceived wrong doing", you mean clear and well documented violations of the law - right? Portraying people who don't immediately prostrate themselves before the throne of state power as having some sort of personality defect is pretty funny as well.
- glenra 11y ago
  Our security apparatus is the boy who cried "wolf" (okay, actually they cried "terrorist", but close enough). They've repeatedly lied to Congress and to the people, including lying about having programs and lying about shutting down programs. Given that background context, distrust is appropriate here! There is no short-term fix but in the long run the authorities could probably win back some trust if they henceforth were consistently truthful and transparent and actually held somebody responsible the next time lawbreaking occurs.
yanazendo 11y ago
Can you trust Obama and the NSA to do what they say they are going to do?
LeoPanthera 11y ago
No they won't.
jdp23 11y ago
A somewhat inaccurate headline. As Marcy Wheeler writes: "Just a tiny corner of the phone dragnet will shut down, and the government will continue to collect “telephony metadata records in bulk … including records of both U.S. and non-U.S. persons” under EO 12333. Hypothetically, for every single international call that had been picked up under the Section 215 dragnet and more (at a minimum, because NSA collects phone records overseas with location information), a matching record has been and will continue to be collected overseas, under EO 12333." https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-wants-you-to-forget-it-will-still-collect-your-phone-records-in-bulk/ https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-wants-y...
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > international call It's important to remember that Snowden has confirmed several times that "international" is referring to the physical wire/fiber/radio they are tapping, not the people at each end of the call. In a packet switched world, any call can become "international" if the packets are sent by way of the Bahamas. ("misconfigured" BGP is a traditional method)
rbanffy 11y ago
Good. We can all pretend we believe it.

67 points by benologist 11y ago

paulajohnson 11y ago

What, again?

ericzawo 11y ago

Sure they will.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

caseysoftware 11y ago

> As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said. Except every time the White House has said "we're only doing X.." we find out later that it wasn't true so why should we believe them now?

SeanDav 11y ago

And the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus will be holding a press conference on Monday.

fpp 11y ago
"... and from Monday, the official language of the USA will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old..." (adapted from Woody Allen's Bananas)

ilamont 11y ago

As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said. "As required by law"? The government violated the Fourth Amendment and the director of national security committed perjury (1). As required by law, justice officials and prosecutors should have brought charges against Clapper and other responsible parties ... yet nothing happened. What makes the government think that we will trust them to investigate and prosecute anyone violating our rights in the future, "as required by law"? 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke-didnt-lie-about-nsa-surveillance/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke-d...

hellbanner 11y ago
Yeah, and are they starting a new program on Saturday?
shermablanca 11y ago
Not surprising to anyone who follows greenwald. Read his book With Liberty And Justice For _Some_
rayiner 11y ago
Where was it found the NSA violated the 4th amendment?
- bediger4000 11y ago
  Oh, please. There comes a time when even you have to give up the legalistic approach, and just acknowledge plain fact. The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is. If you want legalistic, narrow (razor thin!) interpretations of all "rights", then they're not really rights, they're just something for lawyers to natter on about. Further, Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" becomes nothing but parody.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is. Even assuming that were true, I disagree it would be an archetypal 4th amendment violation. Privacy on the Internet doesn't exist as a matter of fact. Anyone who controls a router between you and your destination can see your Internet traffic. When you try to apply the 4th amendment to the Internet, you're not asking the government not to intrude on an otherwise private space (i.e. the heart of the 4th amendment). You're asking it to indulge a purely legal fiction of privacy.

tomp 11y ago

On Monday, the Pope will convert to Islam. On Tuesday, Elon Musk will start his journey to Mars. Wednesday, Isis declares peace. By Thursday, the static vs. dynamic typing debate will finally be solved. On Friday, king Salman of Saudi Arabia will donate all his wealth to charity. And finally, on Saturday, Elon Musk will land on Mars.

gamesbrainiac 11y ago
On Sunday, the Vim vs Emacs debate will finally come to an end.
- Zelphyr 11y ago
  This sudden bout of positivity on HN is worrisome.

mtgx 11y ago

1) NSA shuts down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday. 2) NSA starts totally different and with even less oversight "aggregate" phone surveillance program by Monday. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email-analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-e...

digdigdag 11y ago

"Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died." It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation. If their reasoning is that the bulk surveillance program is necessary to avert terrorism, then surely they must have known or, at least, gotten a hint of what was due to happen on that day. Of course, it doesn't work like that. The NSA's "metadata" collection policies means that a great majority of the data they collect is harmless "noise". I can understand data collection when they have narrowed down their leads to a specific person or group, but the current dragnet they've set up is costing taxpayers millions to store and manage the data.

trimbo 11y ago
> It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

awalton 11y ago

I'm sure this will go as well as shutting down the bulk email surveillance program did.

karmacondon 11y ago

There's no way to win here. If the government outright abolished the NSA at noon, there would be dozens of hn comments at 12:01 saying "Yeah, but did they really abolish it?" or "But what about all the bad things they did when they existed? or "They'll just do something even worse next". It seems like distrust of authority is just a part of some people's personality. Perceived wrong doing by the government in the past has caused them to distrust the government into perpetuity, even if that same government does exactly what those people demand. So why should the authorities listen at all? It's like a convicted felon who can no longer get a job or be part of society. Why not just go back to a life of crime? You're damned if you and damned if you don't.

woodman 11y ago
Wow, I don't know that I've seen such a perfect example of Battered Woman Syndrome outside of a rerun of Cops. By "Perceived wrong doing", you mean clear and well documented violations of the law - right? Portraying people who don't immediately prostrate themselves before the throne of state power as having some sort of personality defect is pretty funny as well.
glenra 11y ago
Our security apparatus is the boy who cried "wolf" (okay, actually they cried "terrorist", but close enough). They've repeatedly lied to Congress and to the people, including lying about having programs and lying about shutting down programs. Given that background context, distrust is appropriate here! There is no short-term fix but in the long run the authorities could probably win back some trust if they henceforth were consistently truthful and transparent and actually held somebody responsible the next time lawbreaking occurs.

yanazendo 11y ago

Can you trust Obama and the NSA to do what they say they are going to do?

LeoPanthera 11y ago

No they won't.

jdp23 11y ago

A somewhat inaccurate headline. As Marcy Wheeler writes: "Just a tiny corner of the phone dragnet will shut down, and the government will continue to collect “telephony metadata records in bulk … including records of both U.S. and non-U.S. persons” under EO 12333. Hypothetically, for every single international call that had been picked up under the Section 215 dragnet and more (at a minimum, because NSA collects phone records overseas with location information), a matching record has been and will continue to be collected overseas, under EO 12333." https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-wants-you-to-forget-it-will-still-collect-your-phone-records-in-bulk/ https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-wants-y...

pdkl95 11y ago
> international call It's important to remember that Snowden has confirmed several times that "international" is referring to the physical wire/fiber/radio they are tapping, not the people at each end of the call. In a packet switched world, any call can become "international" if the packets are sent by way of the Bahamas. ("misconfigured" BGP is a traditional method)

rbanffy 11y ago

Good. We can all pretend we believe it.