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No court order was necessary because AT&T consented to the NSA presence. Just like how your employer can hand over your corporate laptop to the police without n

No court order was necessary because AT&T consented to the NSA presence. Just like how your employer can hand over your corporate laptop to the police without needing a warrant. If you don't like it, consider dealing with another business and encrypting your traffic with a full tunnel VPN. Yes. Secret courts are reasonable due process. Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information? Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?

srean 6y ago
So you agree that court orders are not that fancy a deterrent that you made it out to be. You said > If they wanted to intentionally examine your network traffic, that would require a court order. I just gave you an example when that did not matter. > Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades? Whenever you are willing to have an honest discussion rather than a blinkered and intentionally misleading cheerleading
- deathgrips 6y ago
  They don't need a court order to sniff packets and do bulk collection. All that data goes into huge data centers. If they want to query that collected data for an American's information, they get a warrant. No human looks at an American's data before getting a warrant. You'd do well to familiarize yourself with their process, which is highly publicized.
  - srean 6y ago
    > No human looks at an American's data before getting a warrant. Prove it.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
> Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information? Yes, independent review by a board or committee separate from the defense intelligence complex who will help determine if the information is actually damaging or if it's just some bullshit a midlevel staffer at the Pentagon determined is 'damaging.' As an American, I am deeply disturbed by the complete absence of transparency of these programs to Congress and the American people. And honestly I'm not convinced that the people running these programs have any ability to see the forest for the trees, or if they're not just some D.C. automaton skilled enough at groupthink and not asking questions to get the tippity-top security clearance. Is it a drooling idiot running the program? Dunno. Classified.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  >independent review by board or committee Their spying on Americans is reviewed by judges and courts. They get warrants for every american they spy on. The senate intelligence committee may (behind closed doors and under the oath of secrecy) inquire about just about anything the intelligence community does. The president may at his or her sole discretion declassify any information. Haven't you heard, the first rule of conflict is "all warfare is deception"? Try running a state with zero secrets and see how far you get.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    Unfortunately, they only get warrants when civilians are looking over their shoulder. Snowden cleared that one up. Those judges, and the members of the senate intelligence committee are most definitely not an independent committee. That's like calling the police commission an independent committee. Even if they were, how would we even know if they're not just rubberstamping stuff? Congress is in the dark. Remember Niger? "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question (about) why we were there," he said. "We'll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won't find out about it in the paper." When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was asked later on "Meet the Press" about knowing whether there were troops in Niger, he responded, "No, I did not." https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/niger-troops-lawmakers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/niger-troops-lawmake... If they don't even know where we have troops doing mildly classified stuff, how much do you think they know about black programs that are totally off the books? The president has thus far decided things like, 'huh, the Coronavirus is a lot worse than everyone thinks...in February...better not tell anyone about it and we should do absolutely nothing to prepare' classified. Great guy to have in charge of that. Think about the people we're actually fighting wars against? Do you think elaborate deception has made a sliver of difference in any conflict fought by the United States in the past 60 years? We need transparency and civilian oversight. I'm not afraid of an Afghan Taliban fighter knowing our super secret plan to spy on the planet. I am afraid of a defense intelligence complex that has shown zero hesitancy in the past to spy on Americans and is increasingly operating in the shadows with little oversight outside of the White House. This whole system is not engineered for the benefit of the American people. It's a juggernaut of bureaucracy and secrecy that serves a defense and intelligence community that is pursuing god knows what.

srean 6y ago

So you agree that court orders are not that fancy a deterrent that you made it out to be. You said > If they wanted to intentionally examine your network traffic, that would require a court order. I just gave you an example when that did not matter. > Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades? Whenever you are willing to have an honest discussion rather than a blinkered and intentionally misleading cheerleading

deathgrips 6y ago
They don't need a court order to sniff packets and do bulk collection. All that data goes into huge data centers. If they want to query that collected data for an American's information, they get a warrant. No human looks at an American's data before getting a warrant. You'd do well to familiarize yourself with their process, which is highly publicized.
- srean 6y ago
  > No human looks at an American's data before getting a warrant. Prove it.

phobosanomaly 6y ago

> Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information? Yes, independent review by a board or committee separate from the defense intelligence complex who will help determine if the information is actually damaging or if it's just some bullshit a midlevel staffer at the Pentagon determined is 'damaging.' As an American, I am deeply disturbed by the complete absence of transparency of these programs to Congress and the American people. And honestly I'm not convinced that the people running these programs have any ability to see the forest for the trees, or if they're not just some D.C. automaton skilled enough at groupthink and not asking questions to get the tippity-top security clearance. Is it a drooling idiot running the program? Dunno. Classified.

deathgrips 6y ago
>independent review by board or committee Their spying on Americans is reviewed by judges and courts. They get warrants for every american they spy on. The senate intelligence committee may (behind closed doors and under the oath of secrecy) inquire about just about anything the intelligence community does. The president may at his or her sole discretion declassify any information. Haven't you heard, the first rule of conflict is "all warfare is deception"? Try running a state with zero secrets and see how far you get.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  Unfortunately, they only get warrants when civilians are looking over their shoulder. Snowden cleared that one up. Those judges, and the members of the senate intelligence committee are most definitely not an independent committee. That's like calling the police commission an independent committee. Even if they were, how would we even know if they're not just rubberstamping stuff? Congress is in the dark. Remember Niger? "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question (about) why we were there," he said. "We'll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won't find out about it in the paper." When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was asked later on "Meet the Press" about knowing whether there were troops in Niger, he responded, "No, I did not." https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/niger-troops-lawmakers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/niger-troops-lawmake... If they don't even know where we have troops doing mildly classified stuff, how much do you think they know about black programs that are totally off the books? The president has thus far decided things like, 'huh, the Coronavirus is a lot worse than everyone thinks...in February...better not tell anyone about it and we should do absolutely nothing to prepare' classified. Great guy to have in charge of that. Think about the people we're actually fighting wars against? Do you think elaborate deception has made a sliver of difference in any conflict fought by the United States in the past 60 years? We need transparency and civilian oversight. I'm not afraid of an Afghan Taliban fighter knowing our super secret plan to spy on the planet. I am afraid of a defense intelligence complex that has shown zero hesitancy in the past to spy on Americans and is increasingly operating in the shadows with little oversight outside of the White House. This whole system is not engineered for the benefit of the American people. It's a juggernaut of bureaucracy and secrecy that serves a defense and intelligence community that is pursuing god knows what.