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NSA's Warrantless Wiretaps (2012)
- jjoonathan 4y agoNSA: "it doesn't count as a 4th Amendment search if we don't find anything!" It's dumb, it's gross, but sadly it has been normalized -- if the Snowden leaks couldn't get the ball moving to rein them in, what can?
- pvg 4y agoThe NSA warrantless wiretapping was reported in the regular news years before Snowden.
- alsaaro 4y agoI have a hunch that Snowden is a spy himself. Like Cypher in The Matrix, who wanted his machine masters to reinsert him as a celebrity after his betrayal, Snowden's Russian masters made him into a celebrity after his betrayal.
- ben_w 4y agoIf nobody in Russia so much as tried to milk Snowden for all he's worth, someone ought to have been fired. However, every impression I have of Snowden is that he is patriotic to the USA, and that the sole reason he is in Russia now is genuinely because of the pressure that the government of USA put on every other government to turn him over.
- plonk 4y ago> However, every impression I have of Snowden is that he is patriotic to the USA, and that the sole reason he is in Russia now is genuinely because of the pressure that the government of USA put on every other government to turn him over. Can be both. NSA contractor sees unethical secret programs, gets disillusioned and considers disclosing them, Russian SVR somehow picks that up and encourages him to do it, maybe promises him support, money, or refuge if he does. Everybody wins, except the US.
- simoncion 4y agoSnowden is in Russia because the US State Department revoked his passport, either leaving him stranded in Russia, or leaving him in limbo in the air between Hong Kong and Moscow (depending on exactly when they revoked it): https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-the-justice-system/edward-snowden-passport-revoked https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-the-justice-system/edw... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/edward-snowden-interview_n_5403117 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/edward-snowden-interview_n_54... https://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/u_s_revokes_snowdens_passport_sources_say/ https://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/u_s_revokes_snowdens_passpo... That's it. End of story. I remember reports that his likely ultimate destination was Venezuela or Guatemala, but these are distant, fuzzy memories, so they may not be correct. Folks have made a _ton_ of hay out of the fact that Snowden ended up in Russia... but the truth of the matter is that he's there because the State Department stranded him there.
- ncmncm 4y agoEcuador.
- plonk 4y agoWhat makes you sure that the public story is the real one? It doesn't seem that hard to plan for Snowden to be in the right airport at the time his passport gets revoked, with some support. The fact that neither the US nor Russia went on record saying the opposite means nothing. The US might not believe they have anything to gain by trying to convince people that Snowden is a Russian agent. Doesn't mean it's false.
- ben_w 4y agoWhat would such support look like? I don’t have any reason to expect that the timing of the revocation would be sufficiently in his control to do that.
- plonk 4y agoThat’s not what I meant. Assuming that Snowden had support from the Russian state, his handlers could easily guess how long his passport would last and help him get to the right places at the right time. Nothing public proves it, but neither does the GP have grounds to be confident that Snowden really got stuck in Russia by chance.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoif the us didn't want him in Russia, why did they cancel his passport when he was in the Russian airport?
- mpyne 4y agoThey canceled his passport even before he left China. He's always been welcome to return to the USA to face justice. But that's not what he wanted, and that's why he's in Russia, and why he was at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong for multiple days before he finally departed on a plane to Moscow [1]. He's a defector, so he's currently exactly where he wanted to be when he left. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-at-russian-consulate-while-in-hong-kong/2013/08/26/8237cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-a...
- ncmncm 4y ago"Justice".
- orthecreedence 4y agoSure, but the revelations about PRISM are pretty damning.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoIn what way? PRISM (as described in the leaked and declassified document instead of Greenwald's wacky interpretation of those documents) is very clearly legal.
- ok_dad 4y agoWhy is “legal” the bar here? What is something is legal but still bad otherwise?
- lern_too_spel 4y agoBuilding data processing systems to spy on foreigners outside the US who are national security risks isn't even "bad." It's better than bad, it's good!
- ok_dad 4y agoI’m sure that those systems can’t be repurposed to look inwardly…
- lern_too_spel 4y agoYes, that would be against the law, and since the data comes from third parties who have to approve each request for which accounts to monitor, it is highly unlikely they could get away with it even if they didn't have numerous internal leaks and declassifications. In other words, your certainty is justified.
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- anonporridge 4y ago> if the Snowden leaks couldn't get the ball moving to rein them in, what can? Likely nothing. We'll all likely be ruled by Rehoboam soon, if not already. Surveillance and manipulation of the masses has always been a presence in civilization. It's most effective when the masses don't know or care that it's happening. So long as the watchers can keep the bread and circuses flowing, nothing will change.
- ben_w 4y agoProbably not already. Current AI is fast enough to read, watch, and listen to the entirety of human communication and media, but dumb enough that despite consuming a significant fraction of everything humans have put on the internet, they still only operate at the level of someone with medium-stage Alzheimer's (based on my experience caring for a relative with that). (Of course, that does suggest we're merely an algorithmic breakthrough from something genuinely transformative).
- orthecreedence 4y agoSnowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. I feel like US citizens as a whole are a lost cause. We're basically living the 1984 surveillance nightmare (remember the monitoring devices that lived in everyone's homes that were watching them?). The only difference is we've actually been duped to pay for the devices that spy on us and install them willingly. But it's soOoO convenient to ask Alexa "what's the weather like outside" (because sticking your head out the fucking front door is just, ugh, such a nightmare) or to save you from the unbelievably arduous and thankless task of having to flip a light switch with your finger. Definitely worth it.
- xxpor 4y agoIt's not like 1984 at all. You're missing the important half of the equation. No one's (at an aggregate level) getting Room 101ed from it.
- jaredhallen 4y agoThis is true, at the moment. My concern is that things change over time, but what is the likelihood that the data is going away, or that the spying will suddenly stop? It seems almost inevitable that abuse will increase over time.
- anonym29 4y agoThe fundamental argument isn't that the power (indiscriminate & pervasive one-way invasion of privacy) wielded by the NSA is actively being abused (which isn't to say it's never abused, but that's besides the point), rather, the argument is that, as a democratic and free people, we should be staunchly opposed to freely granting the right for such power to exist. If one of our primary objectives as a liberal, democratic society is to avoid that kind of oppressive totalitarianism (as would be expected of a liberal democracy), then we have a duty to seek and employ the most effective strategy possible in avoiding that outcome. Two things are required for the type of totalitarian surveillance described in 1984: the technological means and the will of the state to demand such evil acts be committed. I'd argue that the best strategy to prevent an outcome that requires both means and will is to target the means. If the means exist, the state lacks only the will to utilize those means for evil ends (putting people in Room 101). If the state lacks the means, then even once the will to do evil does inevitably come along, the state will be rightfully shackled and lack the requisite tools to enforce such tyranny.
- kvetching 4y agoIt was frustrating to listen to the literal CIA Spy on Lex Fridman call Snowden a traitor for exposing this system. He says America is less safe because of him, as if the program stopped because of Snowden.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoBefore Snowden people with a clue about the possibility of pervasive surveillance were derided as wearing tinfoil hats. Now we have pervasive use of TLS which makes it harder to pick data off of any random wire.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> if the Snowden leaks couldn't get the ball moving to rein them in, what can? Things happened. Encryption went mainstream, particularly in tech. Some minor but meaningful limits on dragnet surveillance were passed. Privacy has a problem of political nihilism. I worked on initiatives years ago. Simply getting people to show up to town halls led to endless bullshit about how America is hopelessly corrupt and why should they bother with a meaningless measure. Then the guys pushing a chicken farming bill show up and they all have flags and some are in costumes and they offer to petition and join the phone banks in her next campaign should she back the bill… Is there any reason for an elected to entertain the former?
- autoexec 4y agoI can't imagine how he must have felt, giving up everything he had (which was considerable), risking his life to let the US population know their rights were being abused and their freedom endangered, but even after all of that we've done nothing to change the situation and a sizable percentage of the population see Snowden himself as the problem. To our credit, we elected a man who promised to end spying on American citizens, but he ended up going back on is word and making it worse and no other presidential candidate since has spoken out against the NSA like he did.
- dannymi 4y ago>all of that we've done nothing to change the situation Everything is encrypted now, even recipe sites. For a chat program, the first question of even laypeople is whether it's encrypted or not. I'd say some things did change. But yeah, would be better to change the laws.
- yieldcrv 4y agoIn Ross’ case, the argument from the state was that it wasn't a 4th amendment search unless Ross drops his 5th amendment protections to incriminates himself and confess that he - a US citizen - was the owner of the server I’ve seen cases thrown out for less
- Eupraxias 4y agoFellwock's leaks were clearly ineffective. With Snowden, many were scratching their heads at first that it was 'news'.
- the_optimist 4y agoWell at least we have secret courts to protect us. Making false statements to those secret courts is punishable by community service and probation.
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- ksidudwbw 4y agoUhhmmm aggregate "non-personal" profiling by faang
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- pilgrimfff 4y agoIf any politician ran on bringing the 4th amendment back, they'd have my vote. But spying on the populace is bipartisan.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> spying on the populace is bipartisan Because of attitudes like this. Political nihilism never won any battles.
- xtian 4y agoStatements of fact are now “nihilism”, I guess
- pilgrimfff 4y ago> Because of attitudes like this. I had no idea my attitude could magically make party elites care about this basic constitutional right! Thanks so so much for setting me straight. > Political nihilism never won any battles. Refusing to criticize politicians because they wear the tie color you like is the least effective thing you can possibly do. I say it's nihilism to ignore this fact and vote these same people into office again and again.
- sneak 4y agoYou seem to be blaming the victim.
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- autoexec 4y agoObama ran on the promise to end domestic spying by the NSA, and as president he would have had the authority to do it at any time, but once he got into office he expanded the domestic spying program. The most simple explanation is that he lied through his teeth and that he had no intention of stopping it. It's also possible that once he got elected he was convinced that it was so worthwhile that it was worth violating his campaign promises, but what worries me most is the possibility that Obama honestly believed, and still believes, that it was a unacceptable violation of our constitutional rights and that he only had to be shown a sample of the data collected on him and his family to get him to fall in line and approve whatever the NSA wanted. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." The NSA has so much data on us that they could blackmail anyone, and could likely plant incriminating data as well. That power exists for them to use at any time. If they're willing to use it in order to keep that power over anyone they see as an enemy then it's possible that no president or politician will ever be able to do anything to stop America's domestic spying program.
- Zigurd 4y agoModern infrastructure routers have the ability to replicate traffic on any network interface to a second network interface, and to do this without affecting throughput or latency through the node. I have long suspected that the story of "beam splitters" on optic fibers was a red herring to distract from how it is really done. If you are surveilling a foreign adversary's submarine cable, OK, you need to actually tap-in to a fiber cable. But for a fraction of the price of one sigint satellite, you could provision "twin" NICs and build/buy backhaul from every backbone node in the US.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago> Modern infrastructure routers have the ability to replicate traffic on any network interface to a second network interface, and to do this without affecting throughput or latency through the node. I have long suspected that the story of "beam splitters" on optic fibers was a red herring to distract from how it is really done. They probably do both... beam spliters are nice, for when you don't even want the telco to know.
- autoexec 4y ago> They probably do both... beam spliters are nice, for when you don't even want the telco to know. They are way past bothering to hide what they do. Decades ago they were happy to march right into a telco's headquarters and take over parts of their facility for their own use and then set up splitters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- mhh__ 4y agoIs a beam splitter not visible to something like time domain reflectometry?
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoDepends on how much the split away.... if it's like 0.1dB loss, it could be explained by a normal bend in the fiber.
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- akomtu 4y agoSome philosophical thoughts. The internet implements the innate quality of our consciousnesses to unite and act as one, and surveillance corresponds to omniscience when anyone can see and think with eyes and minds of others, seeing and knowing everything as a result. However, some among us are very grabby: their vision of omniscience is a one-side mirror type of surveillance and their vision of united consciousness is a hive-type central will ruling others.
- lioeters 4y agoThe eye of the pyramid aspires to be god-like, to see all and know all. The hunger for power is bottomless, and it will seek to prevent real unity among the people from ever becoming realized. Stirring conflict between brothers, within families and nations, replacing democratically elected leaders, corporate spying for private gain of their insiders, surveilling potential popular movements and sabotaging them - pulling strings from behind the scenes. National security is just an excuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness
- themitigating 4y agoWho?
- Eupraxias 4y agoMostly the cigarette-smoking man and his gang. They're building landing strips for gay martians. I swear to god.
- user00012-ab 4y agoGPT3 write me an article about NSA's Warrantless Wiretaps in a format to get people angry: The NSA's warrantless wiretapping program is a blatant violation of our privacy rights. The program allows the NSA to collect the communications of Americans without a warrant, and without any suspicion of wrongdoing. This program is a direct assault on our Fourth Amendment rights, and it must be stopped. The NSA claims that the program is needed to fight terrorism, but there is no evidence that it has actually done so. In fact, the program has been repeatedly ruled to be illegal by federal courts. It is time for Congress to step in and put an end to this program. We cannot allow the NSA to continue to violate our constitutional rights.
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- jmyeet 4y agoThe important lesson to draw from the contorted justification for warrantless wiretaps is that this happens all the time. Some have been suckered into thinking something like an "originalist" or "textualist" interpretation of the US constitution is somehow a real thing. It's not. In fact, it's a fairly modern invention from the Nixon era created with the expressed purpose of rationalizing a socially conservative agenda. All of this stuf is, essentially, completely made up. The fact that we have civil asset forfeiture (ie legalized theft) should tell you everything. It quite literally says "unreasonable search and seizures". How is this not a 4th Amendment violation? I'll tell you how: the goal was to OK civil asset forfeiture so the meaning of words were contorted until a sufficient justification was found. There is no textual interpretation going on anywhere. None. We see this with the legal justification for NSA warrantless wiretaps too. Metadata isn't a "search". Somehow the government can record who you spoke to, when and for how long but not the content and that's still not a "search" (in the 4th Amendment sense). Why? Because the whole thing is completely made up.
- AJMaxwell 4y agoTo be fair, the US government has been able to monitor who communicates with whom and how many pages their conversation is through the postal service since the beginning. Today it's much easier to track those physical with technology and automation.
- ch4s3 4y ago> Some have been suckered into thinking something like an "originalist" or "textualist" interpretation of the US constitution is somehow a real thing. It's not. In fact, it's a fairly modern invention from the Nixon era created with the expressed purpose of rationalizing a socially conservative agenda. It's not less real or moderns than the "Living Constitution" Theory which dates to the progressive era and was first tested in a case that overturned the government's first attempt at an income tax. Moreover a proper originalist interpretation of the wiretaps and indeed many technological searches is that they violate the 4th amendment as Scalia found in a GPS related case and Gorsuch dissented in several more recent cases. Scalia was kind of all over the map on police powers and Thomas just makes shit up so I think there's plenty of room to criticism them.
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- Rackedup 4y agoDo you know that there is about 33 intelligence agencies in the US alone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3FC7qIAGZk&t=2m06s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3FC7qIAGZk&t=2m06s (coming from ex-CIA officer)
- bobowzki 4y agoI don't really know what to think of Andrew Bustamante. I liked his podcasts but then he started talking about "energy and mass" and psychic powers...
- rfrec0n 4y agoTo be fair, supernatural beliefs are fairly common amongst olderish veterans of the IC/DoD because those agencies spent/spend billions and billions of dollars a year on programs for things like that (mind reading, controlling the physical world with your brain, remote viewing, binaural beats, etc). The popular movie The Men Who Stare At Goats was based on a non-fiction book/documentary, which is unbelievably crazier than the Hollywood version.
- bobowzki 4y agoThanks for the suggestion. I will check it out!
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