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"not wittingly" [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEh-l_G1Gcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEh-l_G1Gcs

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Can't watch because I am at work but the NSA conducts foreign surveillance. If a foreign target talks to a US citizen that's "unwittingly" surveiling a US citizen. Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats?
- etrabroline 5y ago
  Under the 4th amendment NSA is forbidden from collecting the communications of US citizens without a warrant. Do you disagree or think the constitution should be amended to authorize that?
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Under the 4th amendment NSA is forbidden from collecting the communications of US citizens without a warrant. Strictly by the text this is false in a couple respects: (1) the text does not refer to or limit its provisions to citizens at all. (2) the text prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, not those without warrants (it also sets standards for warrants, when they are issued.) The Supreme Court has inferred from the juxtaposition of the reasonableness requirement and warrant standards that warrants are presumptively but not universally required for reasonableness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Mediterraneo10 5y ago
  > Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats? It is one thing for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats, but I have always been uncomfortable with the suggestion that the NSA is perfectly entitled to vacuum up the communications of ordinary, perfectly harmless foreign individuals because "the protections of the American Constitution don’t apply to foreigners". The American Constitution is largely a product of 18th-century natural-law arguments, and so you would think that case can be made that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with a right to privacy regardless of their citizenship.
- MikeUt 5y ago
  But the NSA did collect data on hundreds of millions of US citizens, knew about it, and lied about it to congress and the US people. That is the exact opposite of "unwittingly". That is the action of a domestic threat that has escaped democratic and even government control. > "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded, "No, sir." Wyden asked "It does not?" and Clapper said, "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly." > The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco...
- maybelsyrup 5y ago
  > Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats? I like this question, but I think there's a better one: "do you believe it's alright for the NSA to exist?"
  - xinniethepooh 5y ago
    I like this question, but I think there's a better one: "do you think there is no legitimate threat that the NSA addresses?"
    - maybelsyrup 5y ago
      With their charter (scope of their power), and with their budget, and with their actual (not nominal) level of accountability? Sincerely, no, I don't think so, and I want to make sure you know that I'm taking your question seriously. It's a good one, and a difficult one. This is debatable, of course, but in my view secret services ("intelligence agencies") and secret police (the FBI) are a deal with the devil for societies in general: in the long run much, much more harmful and costly than beneficial. You're taking human beings -- brutally fallible and power-mad like we all have the capacity to be -- and telling them "here, you have a special hall pass to cheat, lie, steal, and kill, but promise to only do it to those guys over there, okay?" Can we really be shocked when, a few years down the line, they forget everything after "but"? Note, too, that this hall pass is both legal and moral, couched as it is in the language of patriotism ("national security"): it's wrong to kill, but this is for your country, so you're good. (Incidentally, things like this really show that Ian Fleming was a pretty good satirist - "license to kill" is much more macabre and darkly funny when you realize that it's real.) It may sound naive or even callous to say that nothing the NSA does is or can be legitimate - yes, al qaeda could kill Americans if the NSA doesn't spy on them or if the CIA doesn't lob a Hellfire missile at their daughter's birthday party. But we citizens make these kinds of decisions all the time, explicitly or implicitly. Take automobiles as an example, or the legal status of alcohol - we've decided that we're okay with hundreds of thousands of people dying every decade in return for using those things. That's on all our heads, as I see it. I'm not certain, but I'd put money that there's no threat the NSA looks out for that, absent the NSA, could wreak as much havoc on the US as car crashes and whiskey (and that's not even counting the interaction of cars and whiskey, heh). And if there was, it'd probably be attributable in whole or in part to how the US has behaved out there beyond our shores. In fact I'm shocked sometimes that the rest of the planet hasn't been more out for our blood given what we did in the 2nd half of the 20th century alone. This isn't to be a mouth-foaming hater, by the way - I love this country very much. But a lot of ugly shit goes down on our dime, and in our names.
- totalZero 5y ago
  A conversation that includes a single US person should be privileged more than a conversation between non-US persons.
- auiya 5y ago
  > Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats? Whether anyone believes it's okay to do or not is irrelevant, the NSA is charged to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance by US law, and does so accordingly.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Calling it unwitting is as lame an excuse as "I was suveiling the middle school locker room walls to prevent graffiti with hidden cameras when I recorded twenty-five terabytes of undressing minors. Therefore no crime was committed by shipping it over interstate lines to third parties for back up." They knew exactly what they were doing every step of the way.
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  Are you saying that the NSA has a different definition of wittingly than the standard definition of wittingly? If you have a bug placed on someone's purse and they talk to others, you are wittingly surveilling them. Unwittingly would imply it was not foreseen that others would be spied on (e.g. placing a wiretap on the wrong phone number).
throwkeep 5y ago
Body language experts must have had a field day with that.

Can't watch because I am at work but the NSA conducts foreign surveillance. If a foreign target talks to a US citizen that's "unwittingly" surveiling a US citizen. Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats?

etrabroline 5y ago
Under the 4th amendment NSA is forbidden from collecting the communications of US citizens without a warrant. Do you disagree or think the constitution should be amended to authorize that?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Under the 4th amendment NSA is forbidden from collecting the communications of US citizens without a warrant. Strictly by the text this is false in a couple respects: (1) the text does not refer to or limit its provisions to citizens at all. (2) the text prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, not those without warrants (it also sets standards for warrants, when they are issued.) The Supreme Court has inferred from the juxtaposition of the reasonableness requirement and warrant standards that warrants are presumptively but not universally required for reasonableness.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Mediterraneo10 5y ago
> Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats? It is one thing for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats, but I have always been uncomfortable with the suggestion that the NSA is perfectly entitled to vacuum up the communications of ordinary, perfectly harmless foreign individuals because "the protections of the American Constitution don’t apply to foreigners". The American Constitution is largely a product of 18th-century natural-law arguments, and so you would think that case can be made that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with a right to privacy regardless of their citizenship.
MikeUt 5y ago
But the NSA did collect data on hundreds of millions of US citizens, knew about it, and lied about it to congress and the US people. That is the exact opposite of "unwittingly". That is the action of a domestic threat that has escaped democratic and even government control. > "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded, "No, sir." Wyden asked "It does not?" and Clapper said, "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly." > The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco...
maybelsyrup 5y ago
> Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats? I like this question, but I think there's a better one: "do you believe it's alright for the NSA to exist?"
- xinniethepooh 5y ago
  I like this question, but I think there's a better one: "do you think there is no legitimate threat that the NSA addresses?"
  - maybelsyrup 5y ago
    With their charter (scope of their power), and with their budget, and with their actual (not nominal) level of accountability? Sincerely, no, I don't think so, and I want to make sure you know that I'm taking your question seriously. It's a good one, and a difficult one. This is debatable, of course, but in my view secret services ("intelligence agencies") and secret police (the FBI) are a deal with the devil for societies in general: in the long run much, much more harmful and costly than beneficial. You're taking human beings -- brutally fallible and power-mad like we all have the capacity to be -- and telling them "here, you have a special hall pass to cheat, lie, steal, and kill, but promise to only do it to those guys over there, okay?" Can we really be shocked when, a few years down the line, they forget everything after "but"? Note, too, that this hall pass is both legal and moral, couched as it is in the language of patriotism ("national security"): it's wrong to kill, but this is for your country, so you're good. (Incidentally, things like this really show that Ian Fleming was a pretty good satirist - "license to kill" is much more macabre and darkly funny when you realize that it's real.) It may sound naive or even callous to say that nothing the NSA does is or can be legitimate - yes, al qaeda could kill Americans if the NSA doesn't spy on them or if the CIA doesn't lob a Hellfire missile at their daughter's birthday party. But we citizens make these kinds of decisions all the time, explicitly or implicitly. Take automobiles as an example, or the legal status of alcohol - we've decided that we're okay with hundreds of thousands of people dying every decade in return for using those things. That's on all our heads, as I see it. I'm not certain, but I'd put money that there's no threat the NSA looks out for that, absent the NSA, could wreak as much havoc on the US as car crashes and whiskey (and that's not even counting the interaction of cars and whiskey, heh). And if there was, it'd probably be attributable in whole or in part to how the US has behaved out there beyond our shores. In fact I'm shocked sometimes that the rest of the planet hasn't been more out for our blood given what we did in the 2nd half of the 20th century alone. This isn't to be a mouth-foaming hater, by the way - I love this country very much. But a lot of ugly shit goes down on our dime, and in our names.
totalZero 5y ago
A conversation that includes a single US person should be privileged more than a conversation between non-US persons.
auiya 5y ago
> Do you believe that it's alright for the NSA to conduct surveillance on foreign threats? Whether anyone believes it's okay to do or not is irrelevant, the NSA is charged to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance by US law, and does so accordingly.
Nasrudith 5y ago
Calling it unwitting is as lame an excuse as "I was suveiling the middle school locker room walls to prevent graffiti with hidden cameras when I recorded twenty-five terabytes of undressing minors. Therefore no crime was committed by shipping it over interstate lines to third parties for back up." They knew exactly what they were doing every step of the way.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
Are you saying that the NSA has a different definition of wittingly than the standard definition of wittingly? If you have a bug placed on someone's purse and they talk to others, you are wittingly surveilling them. Unwittingly would imply it was not foreseen that others would be spied on (e.g. placing a wiretap on the wrong phone number).

throwkeep 5y ago

Body language experts must have had a field day with that.