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I have not thought this through, but it seems like that is what you get for implementing such a law in the first place? Why should an agency be allowed to spy o

I have not thought this through, but it seems like that is what you get for implementing such a law in the first place? Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? If they have a good reason, they can spy, and they can get a warrant for it. If they don't have a reason, they shouldn't be able to search anything, American citizen or not.

fredgrott 3y ago
Name one country that does not spy on it's non citizens. The core part of story was the spying on citizen part without warrants. A Little history...in early 20th century there was a big concern when the pen warrant precedents were established as the FBI felt that it was somewhat illegal. Several SC cases changed their view on that namely specifying that they needed to get a pen warrant for telecommunication eaves dropping. current 702 upended that as pen warrants generally applied to US citizens even out of country whereas 702 changed that to a probability of there being a US citizen caught in the telecomm eaves dropping. What would be nice is a revamp of 702 to be warrant based wire-taps that go through a special court for the warrants with the appropriate increase in judges to handle such a change.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Name one country that does not spy on it's non citizens. San Marino? Costa Rica? Tuvalu?
  - pookah 3y ago
    [dead]
  - ke88y 3y ago
    Shockingly, even the smallest micro-states participate in surveillance of non-citizens. > San Marino Is 23 square miles of land with a population of 33K and is land-locked by Italy. Even still -- as a tiny micro-state land-locked by a friendly NATO and EU member state -- San Marino participates in foreign surveillance in a variety of ways; e.g., a member of the Customs union it collaborates with Europol on counter-terrorism. > Tuvalu Is 10 square miles with 10K people, and even then collaborates with a Five Eyes nation on maritime surveillance. > Costa Rica Unlike the other two examples, Costa Rica is a reasonably sized country. Like other countries which are not tiny micro-states, Costa Rica has its own dedicated intelligence agency independent of collaborative agreements/treaties. It additionally collaborates with both INTERPOL and western intelligence agencies.
roenxi 3y ago
I assume that this article is true, written in good faith and it seems like a powerful reminder that the FISA court is a disgrace to the American democratic process. Therefore in all likelihood the US Executive is even now racing to identify it as having all the hallmarks of Russian misinformation. Turns out Putin's fell grip extends even to Rudolph Contreras, FISA Court Judge. Who knew? There is a general rule in public discourse that it is best to assume good faith of all parties. It is difficult to apply that to the FISA court while still believing the legislators can be allowed to legislate. They are looking past a system that was always going to be used for political suppression that, if tested, is likely to be scandalous and probably illegal. Someone has to be lying in the conversation. The only silver lining here is that the political right wing of the US were the ones who championed it most strongly and it is their candidate who is being hit the most effectively. The world isn't fair, but occasionally karma happens. They should have listened to the human rights advocates and people standing up for honourable legal traditions.
brvsft 3y ago
> Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? Non-Americans don't have the same rights as Americans. They may also be looked at more in a more adversarial manner. I'm not suggesting this is right, just what I'd guess the logic is.
- qup 3y ago
  I'll suggest it's right. I elected the government in large part to protect...us. I want them to spy on our enemies. And I want them to roast for spying on us.
  - cmilton 3y ago
    >I elected the government in large part to protect...us. Protect you from who? >I want them to spy on our enemies. Who are these enemies, and how did we identify them as such? Do we just spy until we found one?
    - argiopetech 3y ago
      All enemies, foreign and domestic, specifically those operating within the federal borders of the United States, it's territories, and any foreign holdings (e.g., embassy grounds). Investigation should begin with crimes that have occurred, suss out those circumstances where there is a bigger picture, and attain warrants for further investigation. Lack of probable cause means no search, a right extended by Amendment IV to all people (at least within US holdings as described above, which is where I think the FBI should be operating). The fault here lies with Congress. FISA is their doing, and it expressly violates all clauses of Amendment IV. The FBI is at fault for swinging this particular bat in a room full of citizens, but they shouldn't have been given the bat to begin with. Why FISA hasn't had a Supreme Court challenge on constitutional grounds is beyond me, but IANAL.
      - cmilton 3y ago
        >The fault here lies with Congress. The fault lies with the idea that there always needs to be an enemy.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? Uh… how about we start with Americans
OneLeggedCat 3y ago
> Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? The answer is that most democracies have various fundamental protections against spying on their own citizens (including the USA), because citizens want that. But governments still want to spy on their own citizens anyway, because terrorism and think-of-the-children and the war on drugs and geopolitics and general control of 1%ers over 99%ers. So it's not even really about non-Americans. So what to do? How to get around that, in a way that citizens don't mind? Why, you set up a secretive Five Eyes agreement (also the other "Eyes"). UK spies on USA citizens, USA spies on UK citizens, the USA shares that gathered intelligence with UK, and UK shares their intelligence with USA. Voila! Now each government can spy on all its citizens via trusted foreign proxies. It's legal, and the citizenry is not informed enough to care. Anyway, that is the answer to your question. 1%ers want it, and citizens are not informed enough to care.
- ChrisKnott 3y ago
  Your understanding of the 5 Eyes agreement is completely wrong. It is in fact an agreement to NOT spy on the citizens of the four other nations.
  - kornhole 3y ago
    Are you of this? I have seen examples to the contrary even though most of this activity is very secretive since they are not allowed to disclose activity to third parties per the five eyes agreements. The agreements are about sharing of information. The patriot act explicitly allows spying on foreigners' communications and the five eyes agreements allow sharing by default. If you can share where in the five eyes agreements that spying on people in the five or nine eyes jurisdictions is not permitted, I would really like to see.
    - ChrisKnott 3y ago
      The controversy which caused this misunderstanding is that incidentally collected SIGINT (i.e. not intentionally targeted) of UK citizens, collected by NSA, was shared back with GCHQ. Because this 180 degree myth about skirting domestic law by spying on each other's citizens is so widespread, it actually makes accurate information difficult to find. The Wikipedia page is squatted by editors who refuse to admit they are wrong, but this article is pretty clear [0]; "The partnership has one core rule, that the members agree not to spy on each other." Wikipedia implies this is limited to governments but it is not. [0] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/we-need-five-eyes-spy-network-oversight https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/we-need-five-eyes...
dfxm12 3y ago
but it seems like that is what you get for implementing such a law in the first place? Who are you talking to? The people being surveilled certainly had zero say in implementing this law.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  The Americans being surveilled almost certainly have the right to vote both for the people who make these laws and the people who oversee enforcement of them at the top level. The problem isn't an unaccountable minority; it's that if you poll ten Americans on whether these are actually good policies, you get different answers depending on how you structure the question (and that's borne out in the voting booth, where Americans keep sending the Congresspeople who passed these laws back to Washington).
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    It's tough to foresee that something like FISA or PATRIOT Act would even be on the table during the previous election when voting for representatives. Yeah, you're right, incumbents tend to keep getting reelected, and while I think the similarities of Democrats and Republicans are overblown, one place where they are very similar is supporting law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex. Taking that into account, even if my senator answered the phone, they have no accountability to me for up to 6 years, and political parties can play games with votes when they know they have the numbers to make sure congress people representing risky districts or having elections coming up soon vote in a safe way. There are some politicians who side with the American people on this, sure, but they are few and far between, even if you look at who is running in primaries. People who voted against the patriot act, like Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul are considered political extremists, even from their own parties. Add to that silence from SCOTUS on the matter (as recently as this: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/supreme_court_wikimedia_nsa/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/supreme_court_wikimed...), and it becomes clear that to say that my right to vote for congressional representatives gives me a say secret surveillance is awfully hand wavy, I think to the point of naivety or victim blaming. In the wake of Snowden's leaks, Gallup found that only 37% of American adults approved of the program, even saying it was designed to fight terrorism: https://news.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-government-surveillance-programs.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-gov..., which is a very charitable way to frame the question for proponents of the program, but again, it doesn't matter what Americans think even when they go into the voting booth, because intelligence community is going to continue doing this anyway.
shadowgovt 3y ago
Almost certainly correct. The change was implemented because the firewall between domestic and foreign surveillance was highlighted as one of the unforced errors in the 9/11 attacks succeeding, but this was the anticipated consequence of it. If you ask the average American whether they're comfortable with this tradeoff (added general scrutiny for added ability to prevent the next attempt at a 9/11), I don't know what they'd say.

fredgrott 3y ago

Name one country that does not spy on it's non citizens. The core part of story was the spying on citizen part without warrants. A Little history...in early 20th century there was a big concern when the pen warrant precedents were established as the FBI felt that it was somewhat illegal. Several SC cases changed their view on that namely specifying that they needed to get a pen warrant for telecommunication eaves dropping. current 702 upended that as pen warrants generally applied to US citizens even out of country whereas 702 changed that to a probability of there being a US citizen caught in the telecomm eaves dropping. What would be nice is a revamp of 702 to be warrant based wire-taps that go through a special court for the warrants with the appropriate increase in judges to handle such a change.

sofixa 3y ago
> Name one country that does not spy on it's non citizens. San Marino? Costa Rica? Tuvalu?
- pookah 3y ago
  [dead]
- ke88y 3y ago
  Shockingly, even the smallest micro-states participate in surveillance of non-citizens. > San Marino Is 23 square miles of land with a population of 33K and is land-locked by Italy. Even still -- as a tiny micro-state land-locked by a friendly NATO and EU member state -- San Marino participates in foreign surveillance in a variety of ways; e.g., a member of the Customs union it collaborates with Europol on counter-terrorism. > Tuvalu Is 10 square miles with 10K people, and even then collaborates with a Five Eyes nation on maritime surveillance. > Costa Rica Unlike the other two examples, Costa Rica is a reasonably sized country. Like other countries which are not tiny micro-states, Costa Rica has its own dedicated intelligence agency independent of collaborative agreements/treaties. It additionally collaborates with both INTERPOL and western intelligence agencies.

roenxi 3y ago

I assume that this article is true, written in good faith and it seems like a powerful reminder that the FISA court is a disgrace to the American democratic process. Therefore in all likelihood the US Executive is even now racing to identify it as having all the hallmarks of Russian misinformation. Turns out Putin's fell grip extends even to Rudolph Contreras, FISA Court Judge. Who knew? There is a general rule in public discourse that it is best to assume good faith of all parties. It is difficult to apply that to the FISA court while still believing the legislators can be allowed to legislate. They are looking past a system that was always going to be used for political suppression that, if tested, is likely to be scandalous and probably illegal. Someone has to be lying in the conversation. The only silver lining here is that the political right wing of the US were the ones who championed it most strongly and it is their candidate who is being hit the most effectively. The world isn't fair, but occasionally karma happens. They should have listened to the human rights advocates and people standing up for honourable legal traditions.

brvsft 3y ago

> Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? Non-Americans don't have the same rights as Americans. They may also be looked at more in a more adversarial manner. I'm not suggesting this is right, just what I'd guess the logic is.

qup 3y ago
I'll suggest it's right. I elected the government in large part to protect...us. I want them to spy on our enemies. And I want them to roast for spying on us.
- cmilton 3y ago
  >I elected the government in large part to protect...us. Protect you from who? >I want them to spy on our enemies. Who are these enemies, and how did we identify them as such? Do we just spy until we found one?
  - argiopetech 3y ago
    All enemies, foreign and domestic, specifically those operating within the federal borders of the United States, it's territories, and any foreign holdings (e.g., embassy grounds). Investigation should begin with crimes that have occurred, suss out those circumstances where there is a bigger picture, and attain warrants for further investigation. Lack of probable cause means no search, a right extended by Amendment IV to all people (at least within US holdings as described above, which is where I think the FBI should be operating). The fault here lies with Congress. FISA is their doing, and it expressly violates all clauses of Amendment IV. The FBI is at fault for swinging this particular bat in a room full of citizens, but they shouldn't have been given the bat to begin with. Why FISA hasn't had a Supreme Court challenge on constitutional grounds is beyond me, but IANAL.
    - cmilton 3y ago
      >The fault here lies with Congress. The fault lies with the idea that there always needs to be an enemy.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? Uh… how about we start with Americans

OneLeggedCat 3y ago

> Why should an agency be allowed to spy on non-americans more anyway? The answer is that most democracies have various fundamental protections against spying on their own citizens (including the USA), because citizens want that. But governments still want to spy on their own citizens anyway, because terrorism and think-of-the-children and the war on drugs and geopolitics and general control of 1%ers over 99%ers. So it's not even really about non-Americans. So what to do? How to get around that, in a way that citizens don't mind? Why, you set up a secretive Five Eyes agreement (also the other "Eyes"). UK spies on USA citizens, USA spies on UK citizens, the USA shares that gathered intelligence with UK, and UK shares their intelligence with USA. Voila! Now each government can spy on all its citizens via trusted foreign proxies. It's legal, and the citizenry is not informed enough to care. Anyway, that is the answer to your question. 1%ers want it, and citizens are not informed enough to care.

ChrisKnott 3y ago
Your understanding of the 5 Eyes agreement is completely wrong. It is in fact an agreement to NOT spy on the citizens of the four other nations.
- kornhole 3y ago
  Are you of this? I have seen examples to the contrary even though most of this activity is very secretive since they are not allowed to disclose activity to third parties per the five eyes agreements. The agreements are about sharing of information. The patriot act explicitly allows spying on foreigners' communications and the five eyes agreements allow sharing by default. If you can share where in the five eyes agreements that spying on people in the five or nine eyes jurisdictions is not permitted, I would really like to see.
  - ChrisKnott 3y ago
    The controversy which caused this misunderstanding is that incidentally collected SIGINT (i.e. not intentionally targeted) of UK citizens, collected by NSA, was shared back with GCHQ. Because this 180 degree myth about skirting domestic law by spying on each other's citizens is so widespread, it actually makes accurate information difficult to find. The Wikipedia page is squatted by editors who refuse to admit they are wrong, but this article is pretty clear [0]; "The partnership has one core rule, that the members agree not to spy on each other." Wikipedia implies this is limited to governments but it is not. [0] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/we-need-five-eyes-spy-network-oversight https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/we-need-five-eyes...

dfxm12 3y ago

but it seems like that is what you get for implementing such a law in the first place? Who are you talking to? The people being surveilled certainly had zero say in implementing this law.

shadowgovt 3y ago
The Americans being surveilled almost certainly have the right to vote both for the people who make these laws and the people who oversee enforcement of them at the top level. The problem isn't an unaccountable minority; it's that if you poll ten Americans on whether these are actually good policies, you get different answers depending on how you structure the question (and that's borne out in the voting booth, where Americans keep sending the Congresspeople who passed these laws back to Washington).
- dfxm12 3y ago
  It's tough to foresee that something like FISA or PATRIOT Act would even be on the table during the previous election when voting for representatives. Yeah, you're right, incumbents tend to keep getting reelected, and while I think the similarities of Democrats and Republicans are overblown, one place where they are very similar is supporting law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex. Taking that into account, even if my senator answered the phone, they have no accountability to me for up to 6 years, and political parties can play games with votes when they know they have the numbers to make sure congress people representing risky districts or having elections coming up soon vote in a safe way. There are some politicians who side with the American people on this, sure, but they are few and far between, even if you look at who is running in primaries. People who voted against the patriot act, like Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul are considered political extremists, even from their own parties. Add to that silence from SCOTUS on the matter (as recently as this: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/supreme_court_wikimedia_nsa/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/supreme_court_wikimed...), and it becomes clear that to say that my right to vote for congressional representatives gives me a say secret surveillance is awfully hand wavy, I think to the point of naivety or victim blaming. In the wake of Snowden's leaks, Gallup found that only 37% of American adults approved of the program, even saying it was designed to fight terrorism: https://news.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-government-surveillance-programs.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-gov..., which is a very charitable way to frame the question for proponents of the program, but again, it doesn't matter what Americans think even when they go into the voting booth, because intelligence community is going to continue doing this anyway.

shadowgovt 3y ago

Almost certainly correct. The change was implemented because the firewall between domestic and foreign surveillance was highlighted as one of the unforced errors in the 9/11 attacks succeeding, but this was the anticipated consequence of it. If you ask the average American whether they're comfortable with this tradeoff (added general scrutiny for added ability to prevent the next attempt at a 9/11), I don't know what they'd say.