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While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the

While this article offers the clearest presentation of the issue I've seen to date, I think the key point (which the article points out halfway in) is that the truth of Trump's claim that he was wiretapped does not depend on the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The system is designed to be used without warrant, so those harping on the detail of whether or not a warrant existed that had Trump in scope are not focused on the core issue. It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants, but Snowden's revelations make it clear this is absolutely not the case.

unityByFreedom 10y ago
> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants, but Snowden's revelations make it clear this is absolutely not the case You mean, since the NSA collects data on millions of Americans? If that's the type of monitoring you mean, Trump's complaint holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me". More like, "Obama continued policy begun by previous administrations to enable spying to protect national security.". It's the primary function of the NSA.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > If that's the type of monitoring you mean Not at all. I mean that any number of people inside the intelligence organizations could have opted to "wiretap" Trump and there would have been no audit trail and no warrant. > holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me" For what it's worth though, I do think the lowly "average Joe" you mention does deserve to be quite irate about his fourth amendment rights being thrown away.
  - willstrafach 10y ago
    > Not at all. I mean that any number of people inside the intelligence organizations could have opted to "wiretap" Trump This is not true. The system will not allow you to just query a US Person, and will automatically flag such requests for review if you try to do so. Even if an analyst conducted "reverse targeting" (Querying a foreign person who the US Person was communicating with), the US Person's information within the intercept(s) is automatically minimized and specific approval would be needed to de-anonymize it, including solid proof that the US Person was actually acting as a foreign adversary, such as a spy. I have no ability to argue that there is not a conspiracy involving multiple people in NSA approving these and OGC turning a blind eye to it and the senate intel committee ignoring it and so on, that is not impossible I suppose, but the reality is very far from simply having the ability to go ahead and wiretap Trump with ease. > and there would have been no audit trail and no warrant. There is absolutely an audit trail, including non-repudation for the analyst who performed the query (They must use their smartcard or "PKI"). This is good, because if you do believe that something awry is going on, you can push for a very specific cause: Put together an independent committee of representatives, have them go through the security clearance process (for those who have not already done so) to be read-in on any necessary SCI compartments to review the data, and conduct a thorough investigation regarding the audit trails of any query regarding Trump and/or associates. I personally find this to be far-fetched, but it is at least a tangible action which you and anyone who shares the belief can push for.
    - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
      How do you know this?
    - grandalf 10y ago
      > There is absolutely an audit trail, including non-repudation for the analyst who performed the query (They must use their smartcard or "PKI"). What do you make of Snowden's assertion that he could have eavesdropped on anyone he wanted? Was he failing to mention that his actions could be audited? Was he failing to mention that he had access to someone else's PKI with which to do the surveillance? Other? Assuming you have knowledge of how the intelligence agencies work: - Which agency is the process you described applicable to? - Are you certain it is the same in other agencies? - Are you aware of any loopholes (or might Snowden have been?) which would have allowed it to happen without consent from higher level officials? I do not have a belief one way or another about whether Trump was "wiretapped". My intent was to apply the logical consequence of the Snowden revelations to the issue being discussed, and flag the FISA warrant argument as a straw man.
      - squallviii 10y ago
        Here's another perspective on Snowden's claims https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/first-cipher-brief-snowdens-boss-shares-lessons-learned-1095 https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/first-ciphe... He was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type files. This is why you don't see raw intelligence from his leaks. From my own experiences working at the agency, GP is correct in that very few people can task FISA data.
        grandalf 10y ago
        > He was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type filesHe was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type files. I wish he were a participant on HN so he could chime in here and defend himself. My impression is that he held several jobs over a few years which gave him access to more of the breadth of what was going on. Surely after the revelations more security checks would have been implemented. But the other instances of large caches of leaked material suggest that there are not effective internal controls. As a thought experiment, I'd suggest that the small size of teams required to maintain security, combined with a 'need to know' rule, results in an environment where creating an internal audit trail puts operational security at risk, and so it is avoided. All the anti-Trump leaks suggest that this is true, since surely Trump would have asked who had access to the leaked information, and the list would have been small enough (b/c of need-to-know) that he could have made a spectacle of the leaker.
- mason240 10y ago
  It's extremely disingenuous to characterize his role as "continued policy begun by previous administration" when his Vice President wrote the core legislation of the Patriot Act, he was actively working to expand those policies for 8 years, and one of his very last acts was to issue an EO further entrenching them.
  - optimuspaul 10y ago
    Citations needed.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - bendbro 10y ago
      Here's some literature on the Omnibus, Mr. Optimus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act_of_1995 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act... https://www.cnet.com/news/joe-bidens-pro-riaa-pro-fbi-tech-voting-record/ https://www.cnet.com/news/joe-bidens-pro-riaa-pro-fbi-tech-v...
  - rand77763 10y ago
    And then he lied to the American people about the FREEDOM Act. Claimed it was some type of reform.
  - unityByFreedom 10y ago
    Both parties have expanded the powers of the agencies. That's no secret.
- ComradeTaco 10y ago
  Trump is amusing. He'll say something absolutely obscene, then his surrogates will say that he meant something different and slightly less obscene. Then supporters will go to great lengths to translate his words into an extremely favorable reading that actually isn't obscene at all. We don't need a Rosetta Stone for it. Trump means exactly what he says.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    >We don't need a Rosetta Stone for it. Trump means exactly what he says. Policy disagreements with Trump aside, I find that actually kind of refreshing.
    - waqf 10y ago
      I think a lot of people do, but it's best not to rate it too highly. It's a lot easier to communicate clearly and effectively when your propositions are simple, and it's a lot easier to have simple propositions when you're not constrained by the evidence. That's pretty much the whole story of demagoguery and why it continues to work.
      - mirimir 10y ago
        > demagoguery Well, if President Trump actually does serve the common people, it will be a wondrous thing.
        weaksauce 10y ago
        > A demagogue ... is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Where is he doing anything other than furthering his interests?
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- giardini 10y ago
  unityByFreedom says: " Trump's complaint holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me"." No, because at any time Obama could have terminated the process and asked for legislation to dismantle the means.
yellow_viper 10y ago
I've not really been following it but isn't one of the main arguments that Obama would've had to have sign any FISA warrant?
- grandalf 10y ago
  > Obama would've had to have sign any FISA warrant? No, the straw man argument is that we can tell whether Trump was wiretapped by the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The president does not sign FISA warrants, the entire purpose of FISA is to streamline (almost to automate) the issuance of warrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
- cmiles74 10y ago
  My understanding is that "listening" to communication between Trump and a foreign national would not require a FISA warrant. I say "listening" because, I believe, all communications with foreign nationals are recorded but only some are actually listened to by actual people.
ajross 10y ago
Why, in a thread about unacceptable reach of executive power, is the top comment a defense of the sitting president (the wielder of such power) and a canard about a mostly-unrelated political scandal?
- geofft 10y ago
  Because there are three separate scenarios we could be in: the sitting president wants to get rid of this power, the sitting president wants to abuse this power, and the sitting president does not understand this power. If the office of the president is saying things like "microwaves that turn into cameras," I'm not confident in the president's ability to understand the problem well enough to solve it effectively (nor, and this is small comfort, to take advantage of it effectively). As a wise man once said, "Anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country." "Now, to solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name."
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    > If the office of the president is saying things like "microwaves that turn into cameras," I'm not confident in the president's ability to understand the problem well enough to solve it effectively (nor, and this is small comfort, to take advantage of it effectively). imho this particular case seems like the incoherent ramblings of a nutcase, but bugs hidden in everyday devices are old-school espionage stuff (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) or countless others). A microwave would be a pretty awesome target for a bug - it can live off the microwave's standby power, and transmit in the 2.4 GHz band when the microwave is operational. The high power usage of the magnetron (and the load-switching voltage spikes) would cover the increased energy demand, and using the 2.4 GHz band prevents it from being detected by bug sweepers (the noise from the microwave will drown out the sweeper).
- grandalf 10y ago
  > a thread about unacceptable reach of executive power This is true no matter who is in charge. > top comment a defense of the sitting president It is not a defense, but if you perceive it that way you reveal your own bias. It is merely a point about the relevance of a FISA warrant when reasoning about the issue. > the wielder of such power) Of course, my caution about the irrelevance of FISA warrants applies equally to the sitting president and to past and future presidents. > a canard about a mostly-unrelated political scandal I'm not really sure how to respond to your characterization of the Snowden revelations as a unrelated political scandal. If we're talking about "wiretapping", Snowden revealed that there is a vast power of surveillance that can be wielded by a large number of people with little oversight. While this does not lend credence to Trump's claims, it does reveal that those rebuking Trump for making the claims based on the lack of a FISA warrant are likely attempting to deceive/misdirect the public about how the apparatus actually works.
alasdair_ 10y ago
For Trump to make such a claim, he would (presumably) need reasons. I would sincerely hope that his reasons are more than simply "I read it on my friends blog"
pharrington 10y ago
The current system is worse than being designed to be used without warrant - it's explicitly setup to subvert the warrant process. Remember, FISA court proceedings are secret, and at least as of 2013 (I'm getting this info from Wikipedia), a massive 12 out of 35,529 FISA warrent requests were rejected.
- XorNot 10y ago
  The rate of rejections does not actually tell you anything about the effectiveness of the court. Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests. Fair enough, but then one could argue that law enforcement are under-utilizing the powers they ought to have since so many requests are sailing through without impediment.
    - lern_too_spel 10y ago
      If the agency submitting requests are denied often, the judge would look at future requests from that agency more closely and deny at an even higher rate. You don't go to the judge with garbage for probable cause. More directly, looking at the approval rate for FISA requests without also looking at the high approval rate for search warrants is going to cause you to reach nonsensical conclusions. https://www.quora.com/How-often-are-requests-for-a-search-warrant-denied-by-a-judge https://www.quora.com/How-often-are-requests-for-a-search-wa...
      - grandalf 10y ago
        > More directly, looking at the approval rate for FISA requests without also looking at the high approval rate for search warrants is going to cause you to reach nonsensical conclusions So you are arguing that search warrants are always rubber stamped? Seemingly, in a public environment where search warrants and the justification for them is public, there is great pressure on the judge and law enforcement to act properly. No such check exists in the FISA system. Think about the lax punishment of Brock Turner and all the attention it received. This is because the miscarriage of justice was public knowledge. Behind closed doors people behave badly. There are numerous examples of this, including reproducible experiments.
willstrafach 10y ago
> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants However, there is an audit trail in the system. As an investigation will occur on this matter, I am sure that cleared representatives will have access to this for review.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > As an investigation will occur on this matter What seems odd to me is that this "investigation" takes more than a few minutes. How is a system that allows easy auditing and checks and balances also the same system that takes weeks or months to determine who accessed specific records. I think it's unlikely we'll see any raw data. Chances are that if there was any investigation going on into anyone on Trump's team (which we know there was), then those individuals showing up at Trump Tower for a meeting creates a metadata correlation to Trump Tower. Hence Trump's claim of "wiretapping Trump Tower" would seemingly be trivially true if even the simplest metadata link between, say, Flynn and Trump Tower were followed or considered potentially relevant by any analyst.
  - willstrafach 10y ago
    > What seems odd to me is that this "investigation" takes more than a few minutes. How is a system that allows easy auditing and checks and balances also the same system that takes weeks or months to determine who accessed specific records. I agree with regards to viewing the data. But that would imply it was a matter of asking NSA to check the audit trail. With a topic so politically charged, I would hope that they would instead get an independent committee with proper security clearances to get access to the data in their SCIF and be able to ask questions to fully understand each action taken and assure it is all above board. I do not have direct knowledge of how such an investigation would work, but my point is that retrieving the audit trail is probably an easy aspect of a longer process.
    - grandalf 10y ago
      True. The sticky aspect of it is that what might technically constitute wiretapping may not reveal special intent to eavesdrop on Trump or his campaign. But this is precisely what's problematic about the metadata program, it casts a very wide net which deprives many innocent bystanders of their rights.
colanderman 10y ago
Why place any weight on Trump's wiretap claim? He was one of the loudest voices in the "birther" movement. That he's now president doesn't mean his self-serving crackpot conspiracy theories suddenly deserve credit.
- 55555 10y ago
  Let me first say that I don't particularly care if Obama was born outside of the US. George Washington, perhaps our greatest president, was obviously an immigrant of sorts. Let me also say that I don't believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama wasn't born in America, as there are several other reasons for faking a birth certificate; perhaps the original has been lost and you've decided that it's worth doing in order to satisfy the electorate. But with those disclaimers, as someone who has done a lot of document editing in Photoshop for the past 15 years, I found this video beyond convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWmWO18GTc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWmWO18GTc8 Regarding Trump's claim that Trump Tower(?) was tapped, I find it very suspicious that Obama's reaction was a lawyered non-denial-denial relayed by an intermediary. Whenever people are accused of crimes and they do anything other than simply deny it, you should be somewhat suspicious. When they use weasel words or clever phrasing, be suspicious. I predicted Theranos' issues something like 8 months in advance due to this; Elizabeth Holmes never simply said "these reports are wrong because our technology works" (because she knew she would be open to lawsuits after the fact if she said as much). Just my 2 cents; ofcourse nobody knows for sure at this point.
  - unclebucknasty 10y ago
    You watched a video that is over an hour long and you generally seem to have put a lot of thought into the veracity of Obama's birth certificate for someone who claims to "not particularly care" about it. Then you move on to discuss your feeling that Obama wiretapped Trump, based only on the fact that Trump said it and you find the "style" of Obama's denial unconvincing. It doesn't seem to matter one bit that Trump himself offered zero evidence of this claim and is even trying to walk it back. The short is that you seem to believe whatever fits your personal narrative. Worse, you try to convince others to blindly believe divisive, destructive, nonsensical conspiracy theories without a scintilla of proof. Saying "we don't know for sure" is dissembling nonsense that can be stated of any claim. It's a transparent device for sowing disinformation without challenge. One could just as easily say, "I think you're a rapist. Of course, I don't know for sure." Unchecked disinformation wreaks havoc on democracy. This nonsense is literally destroying our country.
unclebucknasty 10y ago
Do you find anything odd about the timing of the release of this information, which so perfectly overlays with Trump's unverifiable charge and provides ammunition for reaching a conclusion such as yours? I mean, now there's just enough "justification" to conclude that the illegal wiretap may have been done outside of any traceable process--just as you have done. So, Trump just may be right. How do we know? There is an over-emphasis on what's possible vs. what the actual evidence says. That is the path to a post fact world wherein literally any conspiracy theory can now thrive. At the end of this path lies the complete obliteration of democracy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- grandalf 10y ago
  I think you mistake my intent as being to defend Trump. My intent is only to highlight that a surveillance system that is designed to circumvent accountability is ripe for abuse. This includes abuse of power, but also abuse such as making a fictitious claim about wiretapping having occurred.
  - unclebucknasty 10y ago
    >you mistake my intent as being to defend Trump. From this and your other comments, you undertake a lot of mental gymnastics to let Trump off the hook. And your assertions go well beyond decrying potential abuse by intelligence agencies. >such as making a fictitious claim about wiretapping having occurred. Not really. Or, more specifically, only when people willfully use it in a disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt, and others promote that it is a legitimate basis for that doubt. The people behind the most recent Wikileaks dump seem to understand this, wouldn't you agree? Thinking people still understand that implausible is not the same as actually happened, and that actual proof is required when a president charges a former president with breaking the law.

unityByFreedom 10y ago

> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants, but Snowden's revelations make it clear this is absolutely not the case You mean, since the NSA collects data on millions of Americans? If that's the type of monitoring you mean, Trump's complaint holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me". More like, "Obama continued policy begun by previous administrations to enable spying to protect national security.". It's the primary function of the NSA.

grandalf 10y ago
> If that's the type of monitoring you mean Not at all. I mean that any number of people inside the intelligence organizations could have opted to "wiretap" Trump and there would have been no audit trail and no warrant. > holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me" For what it's worth though, I do think the lowly "average Joe" you mention does deserve to be quite irate about his fourth amendment rights being thrown away.
- willstrafach 10y ago
  > Not at all. I mean that any number of people inside the intelligence organizations could have opted to "wiretap" Trump This is not true. The system will not allow you to just query a US Person, and will automatically flag such requests for review if you try to do so. Even if an analyst conducted "reverse targeting" (Querying a foreign person who the US Person was communicating with), the US Person's information within the intercept(s) is automatically minimized and specific approval would be needed to de-anonymize it, including solid proof that the US Person was actually acting as a foreign adversary, such as a spy. I have no ability to argue that there is not a conspiracy involving multiple people in NSA approving these and OGC turning a blind eye to it and the senate intel committee ignoring it and so on, that is not impossible I suppose, but the reality is very far from simply having the ability to go ahead and wiretap Trump with ease. > and there would have been no audit trail and no warrant. There is absolutely an audit trail, including non-repudation for the analyst who performed the query (They must use their smartcard or "PKI"). This is good, because if you do believe that something awry is going on, you can push for a very specific cause: Put together an independent committee of representatives, have them go through the security clearance process (for those who have not already done so) to be read-in on any necessary SCI compartments to review the data, and conduct a thorough investigation regarding the audit trails of any query regarding Trump and/or associates. I personally find this to be far-fetched, but it is at least a tangible action which you and anyone who shares the belief can push for.
  - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
    How do you know this?
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > There is absolutely an audit trail, including non-repudation for the analyst who performed the query (They must use their smartcard or "PKI"). What do you make of Snowden's assertion that he could have eavesdropped on anyone he wanted? Was he failing to mention that his actions could be audited? Was he failing to mention that he had access to someone else's PKI with which to do the surveillance? Other? Assuming you have knowledge of how the intelligence agencies work: - Which agency is the process you described applicable to? - Are you certain it is the same in other agencies? - Are you aware of any loopholes (or might Snowden have been?) which would have allowed it to happen without consent from higher level officials? I do not have a belief one way or another about whether Trump was "wiretapped". My intent was to apply the logical consequence of the Snowden revelations to the issue being discussed, and flag the FISA warrant argument as a straw man.
    - squallviii 10y ago
      Here's another perspective on Snowden's claims https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/first-cipher-brief-snowdens-boss-shares-lessons-learned-1095 https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/first-ciphe... He was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type files. This is why you don't see raw intelligence from his leaks. From my own experiences working at the agency, GP is correct in that very few people can task FISA data.
      - grandalf 10y ago
        > He was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type filesHe was a Sharepoint admin with access to Office type files. I wish he were a participant on HN so he could chime in here and defend himself. My impression is that he held several jobs over a few years which gave him access to more of the breadth of what was going on. Surely after the revelations more security checks would have been implemented. But the other instances of large caches of leaked material suggest that there are not effective internal controls. As a thought experiment, I'd suggest that the small size of teams required to maintain security, combined with a 'need to know' rule, results in an environment where creating an internal audit trail puts operational security at risk, and so it is avoided. All the anti-Trump leaks suggest that this is true, since surely Trump would have asked who had access to the leaked information, and the list would have been small enough (b/c of need-to-know) that he could have made a spectacle of the leaker.
mason240 10y ago
It's extremely disingenuous to characterize his role as "continued policy begun by previous administration" when his Vice President wrote the core legislation of the Patriot Act, he was actively working to expand those policies for 8 years, and one of his very last acts was to issue an EO further entrenching them.
- optimuspaul 10y ago
  Citations needed.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bendbro 10y ago
    Here's some literature on the Omnibus, Mr. Optimus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act_of_1995 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act... https://www.cnet.com/news/joe-bidens-pro-riaa-pro-fbi-tech-voting-record/ https://www.cnet.com/news/joe-bidens-pro-riaa-pro-fbi-tech-v...
- rand77763 10y ago
  And then he lied to the American people about the FREEDOM Act. Claimed it was some type of reform.
- unityByFreedom 10y ago
  Both parties have expanded the powers of the agencies. That's no secret.
ComradeTaco 10y ago
Trump is amusing. He'll say something absolutely obscene, then his surrogates will say that he meant something different and slightly less obscene. Then supporters will go to great lengths to translate his words into an extremely favorable reading that actually isn't obscene at all. We don't need a Rosetta Stone for it. Trump means exactly what he says.
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  >We don't need a Rosetta Stone for it. Trump means exactly what he says. Policy disagreements with Trump aside, I find that actually kind of refreshing.
  - waqf 10y ago
    I think a lot of people do, but it's best not to rate it too highly. It's a lot easier to communicate clearly and effectively when your propositions are simple, and it's a lot easier to have simple propositions when you're not constrained by the evidence. That's pretty much the whole story of demagoguery and why it continues to work.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      > demagoguery Well, if President Trump actually does serve the common people, it will be a wondrous thing.
      - weaksauce 10y ago
        > A demagogue ... is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. Where is he doing anything other than furthering his interests?
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
giardini 10y ago
unityByFreedom says: " Trump's complaint holds no more water than an average Joe claiming "Obama ordered a wiretap on me"." No, because at any time Obama could have terminated the process and asked for legislation to dismantle the means.

yellow_viper 10y ago

I've not really been following it but isn't one of the main arguments that Obama would've had to have sign any FISA warrant?

grandalf 10y ago
> Obama would've had to have sign any FISA warrant? No, the straw man argument is that we can tell whether Trump was wiretapped by the presence or absence of a FISA warrant. The president does not sign FISA warrants, the entire purpose of FISA is to streamline (almost to automate) the issuance of warrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
cmiles74 10y ago
My understanding is that "listening" to communication between Trump and a foreign national would not require a FISA warrant. I say "listening" because, I believe, all communications with foreign nationals are recorded but only some are actually listened to by actual people.

ajross 10y ago

Why, in a thread about unacceptable reach of executive power, is the top comment a defense of the sitting president (the wielder of such power) and a canard about a mostly-unrelated political scandal?

geofft 10y ago
Because there are three separate scenarios we could be in: the sitting president wants to get rid of this power, the sitting president wants to abuse this power, and the sitting president does not understand this power. If the office of the president is saying things like "microwaves that turn into cameras," I'm not confident in the president's ability to understand the problem well enough to solve it effectively (nor, and this is small comfort, to take advantage of it effectively). As a wise man once said, "Anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country." "Now, to solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name."
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > If the office of the president is saying things like "microwaves that turn into cameras," I'm not confident in the president's ability to understand the problem well enough to solve it effectively (nor, and this is small comfort, to take advantage of it effectively). imho this particular case seems like the incoherent ramblings of a nutcase, but bugs hidden in everyday devices are old-school espionage stuff (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) or countless others). A microwave would be a pretty awesome target for a bug - it can live off the microwave's standby power, and transmit in the 2.4 GHz band when the microwave is operational. The high power usage of the magnetron (and the load-switching voltage spikes) would cover the increased energy demand, and using the 2.4 GHz band prevents it from being detected by bug sweepers (the noise from the microwave will drown out the sweeper).
grandalf 10y ago
> a thread about unacceptable reach of executive power This is true no matter who is in charge. > top comment a defense of the sitting president It is not a defense, but if you perceive it that way you reveal your own bias. It is merely a point about the relevance of a FISA warrant when reasoning about the issue. > the wielder of such power) Of course, my caution about the irrelevance of FISA warrants applies equally to the sitting president and to past and future presidents. > a canard about a mostly-unrelated political scandal I'm not really sure how to respond to your characterization of the Snowden revelations as a unrelated political scandal. If we're talking about "wiretapping", Snowden revealed that there is a vast power of surveillance that can be wielded by a large number of people with little oversight. While this does not lend credence to Trump's claims, it does reveal that those rebuking Trump for making the claims based on the lack of a FISA warrant are likely attempting to deceive/misdirect the public about how the apparatus actually works.

alasdair_ 10y ago

For Trump to make such a claim, he would (presumably) need reasons. I would sincerely hope that his reasons are more than simply "I read it on my friends blog"

pharrington 10y ago

The current system is worse than being designed to be used without warrant - it's explicitly setup to subvert the warrant process. Remember, FISA court proceedings are secret, and at least as of 2013 (I'm getting this info from Wikipedia), a massive 12 out of 35,529 FISA warrent requests were rejected.

XorNot 10y ago
The rate of rejections does not actually tell you anything about the effectiveness of the court. Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > Related fallacy: there is not a standard ratio of people who should fail school tests. Fair enough, but then one could argue that law enforcement are under-utilizing the powers they ought to have since so many requests are sailing through without impediment.
  - lern_too_spel 10y ago
    If the agency submitting requests are denied often, the judge would look at future requests from that agency more closely and deny at an even higher rate. You don't go to the judge with garbage for probable cause. More directly, looking at the approval rate for FISA requests without also looking at the high approval rate for search warrants is going to cause you to reach nonsensical conclusions. https://www.quora.com/How-often-are-requests-for-a-search-warrant-denied-by-a-judge https://www.quora.com/How-often-are-requests-for-a-search-wa...
    - grandalf 10y ago
      > More directly, looking at the approval rate for FISA requests without also looking at the high approval rate for search warrants is going to cause you to reach nonsensical conclusions So you are arguing that search warrants are always rubber stamped? Seemingly, in a public environment where search warrants and the justification for them is public, there is great pressure on the judge and law enforcement to act properly. No such check exists in the FISA system. Think about the lax punishment of Brock Turner and all the attention it received. This is because the miscarriage of justice was public knowledge. Behind closed doors people behave badly. There are numerous examples of this, including reproducible experiments.

willstrafach 10y ago

> It would be nice if all surveillance could be traced back to FISA warrants However, there is an audit trail in the system. As an investigation will occur on this matter, I am sure that cleared representatives will have access to this for review.

grandalf 10y ago
> As an investigation will occur on this matter What seems odd to me is that this "investigation" takes more than a few minutes. How is a system that allows easy auditing and checks and balances also the same system that takes weeks or months to determine who accessed specific records. I think it's unlikely we'll see any raw data. Chances are that if there was any investigation going on into anyone on Trump's team (which we know there was), then those individuals showing up at Trump Tower for a meeting creates a metadata correlation to Trump Tower. Hence Trump's claim of "wiretapping Trump Tower" would seemingly be trivially true if even the simplest metadata link between, say, Flynn and Trump Tower were followed or considered potentially relevant by any analyst.
- willstrafach 10y ago
  > What seems odd to me is that this "investigation" takes more than a few minutes. How is a system that allows easy auditing and checks and balances also the same system that takes weeks or months to determine who accessed specific records. I agree with regards to viewing the data. But that would imply it was a matter of asking NSA to check the audit trail. With a topic so politically charged, I would hope that they would instead get an independent committee with proper security clearances to get access to the data in their SCIF and be able to ask questions to fully understand each action taken and assure it is all above board. I do not have direct knowledge of how such an investigation would work, but my point is that retrieving the audit trail is probably an easy aspect of a longer process.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    True. The sticky aspect of it is that what might technically constitute wiretapping may not reveal special intent to eavesdrop on Trump or his campaign. But this is precisely what's problematic about the metadata program, it casts a very wide net which deprives many innocent bystanders of their rights.

colanderman 10y ago

Why place any weight on Trump's wiretap claim? He was one of the loudest voices in the "birther" movement. That he's now president doesn't mean his self-serving crackpot conspiracy theories suddenly deserve credit.

55555 10y ago
Let me first say that I don't particularly care if Obama was born outside of the US. George Washington, perhaps our greatest president, was obviously an immigrant of sorts. Let me also say that I don't believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama wasn't born in America, as there are several other reasons for faking a birth certificate; perhaps the original has been lost and you've decided that it's worth doing in order to satisfy the electorate. But with those disclaimers, as someone who has done a lot of document editing in Photoshop for the past 15 years, I found this video beyond convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWmWO18GTc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWmWO18GTc8 Regarding Trump's claim that Trump Tower(?) was tapped, I find it very suspicious that Obama's reaction was a lawyered non-denial-denial relayed by an intermediary. Whenever people are accused of crimes and they do anything other than simply deny it, you should be somewhat suspicious. When they use weasel words or clever phrasing, be suspicious. I predicted Theranos' issues something like 8 months in advance due to this; Elizabeth Holmes never simply said "these reports are wrong because our technology works" (because she knew she would be open to lawsuits after the fact if she said as much). Just my 2 cents; ofcourse nobody knows for sure at this point.
- unclebucknasty 10y ago
  You watched a video that is over an hour long and you generally seem to have put a lot of thought into the veracity of Obama's birth certificate for someone who claims to "not particularly care" about it. Then you move on to discuss your feeling that Obama wiretapped Trump, based only on the fact that Trump said it and you find the "style" of Obama's denial unconvincing. It doesn't seem to matter one bit that Trump himself offered zero evidence of this claim and is even trying to walk it back. The short is that you seem to believe whatever fits your personal narrative. Worse, you try to convince others to blindly believe divisive, destructive, nonsensical conspiracy theories without a scintilla of proof. Saying "we don't know for sure" is dissembling nonsense that can be stated of any claim. It's a transparent device for sowing disinformation without challenge. One could just as easily say, "I think you're a rapist. Of course, I don't know for sure." Unchecked disinformation wreaks havoc on democracy. This nonsense is literally destroying our country.

unclebucknasty 10y ago

Do you find anything odd about the timing of the release of this information, which so perfectly overlays with Trump's unverifiable charge and provides ammunition for reaching a conclusion such as yours? I mean, now there's just enough "justification" to conclude that the illegal wiretap may have been done outside of any traceable process--just as you have done. So, Trump just may be right. How do we know? There is an over-emphasis on what's possible vs. what the actual evidence says. That is the path to a post fact world wherein literally any conspiracy theory can now thrive. At the end of this path lies the complete obliteration of democracy.

deleted 10y ago
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grandalf 10y ago
I think you mistake my intent as being to defend Trump. My intent is only to highlight that a surveillance system that is designed to circumvent accountability is ripe for abuse. This includes abuse of power, but also abuse such as making a fictitious claim about wiretapping having occurred.
- unclebucknasty 10y ago
  >you mistake my intent as being to defend Trump. From this and your other comments, you undertake a lot of mental gymnastics to let Trump off the hook. And your assertions go well beyond decrying potential abuse by intelligence agencies. >such as making a fictitious claim about wiretapping having occurred. Not really. Or, more specifically, only when people willfully use it in a disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt, and others promote that it is a legitimate basis for that doubt. The people behind the most recent Wikileaks dump seem to understand this, wouldn't you agree? Thinking people still understand that implausible is not the same as actually happened, and that actual proof is required when a president charges a former president with breaking the law.