5 ms·

Ex-US security official: Prism 'fully authorised by US law' [video]

40 points by coherentpony 13y ago

joelrunyon 13y ago
Isn't there an article circulating that that "law" was found "unconstitutional" already, but that that ruling was classified as soon as it was made? I can't find it now, but I'll keep looking.
- DannyBee 13y ago
  I think you are referring to a FISA opinion that found some 4th amendment violations were had, and that they felt the "spirit" of the law was being violated. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-departme...
dmk23 13y ago
This whole "scandal" is a tempest in a teapot stirred up by the privacy fear-mongering industry. There is nothing to suggest any wrongdoing by any NSA personnel involved (except for Snowden). No harm of this NSA program to any US individual has ever been demonstrated, let alone proven. No proof of any abuse whatsoever. What we have here is a publicity-seeker with a sensationalist story blown out of proportion to drive pageviews, at the cost of undermining and compromising the program that has successfully foiled terrorist plots. Manufactured outrage drives modern media. We should be thanking the designers and operators of PRISM. http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Plot-Involved-Emails-Sent-to-an-Al-Qaeda-Email-Account http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Pl... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called-crucial-to-fight-terror.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-calle... PS: It is also pretty funny how the people who claim to be standing up for our liberties rush to downvote opinions different from their own
- lucian1900 13y ago
  You are perfectly free to express your opinion and we are perfectly free to express our disagreement.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    That's not what the down arrows are for.
dnautics 13y ago
this is worth watching to see the mental gymnastics that the locutor goes through to justify 'legality'. While yes, the program may have had the FORM of a legal procedure, it's clear that at some level, he understands the absurdity of reconciling the ideal of having a government accountable, and being subject to oversight - with the fact that the legislature has crafted a law that gives authority to an organization that can secretly expand its powers. Yet he tries to anyway, and he stammers like crazy - because there's something wrong at the core that he's trying to paper over. 'The conversation should have happened five years ago' - with what? Deposition of witnesses that have come from the future to testify that the secret system that can bootstrap its own rules has not gotten out of hand and has been effective beyond their wildest dreams?
mtgx 13y ago
Time to change the laws then. These laws were rushed through Congress with little public debate, and whenever EFF or ACLU tried to fight them the Obama administration tried to dismiss the cases or stop them somehow. I want to see the constitutionality of scooping 100 million phone records at once, gathering all data from ISP cables, and asking Google and others for probably thousands if not millions of users' profiles and logs at once, being tested in Court, and I want it all to reach the Supreme Court. Then we can establish how legal everything was. You can't trust Congress with any of the laws they've been passing. Remember the NDAA and the indefinite detention clause? That was another one rushed through around new year's eve time. This needs to stop, or I can't ever take them seriously when they say "it's all legal".
- rickmode 13y ago
  Indeed. The question isn't whether the surveillance was legal, but rather if the laws allowing it are constitutional.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
bambax 13y ago
The word "intelligence" should really not be used to describe this program. In Latin intelligere means "to understand"; an "intelligent" person is a clever person. What the NSA is doing is gathering ALL possible information in the remote chance that an infinite part of it might maybe be useful some day. At the time of collection, no effort is made to assess the relevance of the information collected. This is not clever or "intelligent" in any sense of the term. "Intelligence" for an intelligence agency means doing actual spy work; namely, having agents infiltrate terrorist networks and learn about their plans (and risking their lives in the process). This is carpet-bombing. This is cowardly. This is despicable.
bmmayer1 13y ago
"US law" is not a valid justification. Segregation was US law. Slavery was US law. The detention of Japanese Americans during WWII was US law. "It's the law" is a useless moral justification unless the law is grounded in something greater than merely the paper it is written on. Especially when it is written by the government who uses it to defend their creeping invasions of our liberty. The reason we have a Constitution is to constrain the power of the government to make such laws, and if such laws do exist, they are (or should be) considered invalid.
- dnautics 13y ago
  exactly. The argument this guy is making is structurally equivalent to if the courts told Korematsu, "the conversation about internment should have happened in 1941, when congress gave the military broad powers to prosecute the war. If you didn't want the military to intern civilians, you would have written a prohibition against the power of internment into the declaration of war."

40 points by coherentpony 13y ago

Isn't there an article circulating that that "law" was found "unconstitutional" already, but that that ruling was classified as soon as it was made? I can't find it now, but I'll keep looking.

DannyBee 13y ago
I think you are referring to a FISA opinion that found some 4th amendment violations were had, and that they felt the "spirit" of the law was being violated. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-departme...

dmk23 13y ago

This whole "scandal" is a tempest in a teapot stirred up by the privacy fear-mongering industry. There is nothing to suggest any wrongdoing by any NSA personnel involved (except for Snowden). No harm of this NSA program to any US individual has ever been demonstrated, let alone proven. No proof of any abuse whatsoever. What we have here is a publicity-seeker with a sensationalist story blown out of proportion to drive pageviews, at the cost of undermining and compromising the program that has successfully foiled terrorist plots. Manufactured outrage drives modern media. We should be thanking the designers and operators of PRISM. http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Plot-Involved-Emails-Sent-to-an-Al-Qaeda-Email-Account http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Pl... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called-crucial-to-fight-terror.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-calle... PS: It is also pretty funny how the people who claim to be standing up for our liberties rush to downvote opinions different from their own

lucian1900 13y ago
You are perfectly free to express your opinion and we are perfectly free to express our disagreement.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  That's not what the down arrows are for.

dnautics 13y ago

this is worth watching to see the mental gymnastics that the locutor goes through to justify 'legality'. While yes, the program may have had the FORM of a legal procedure, it's clear that at some level, he understands the absurdity of reconciling the ideal of having a government accountable, and being subject to oversight - with the fact that the legislature has crafted a law that gives authority to an organization that can secretly expand its powers. Yet he tries to anyway, and he stammers like crazy - because there's something wrong at the core that he's trying to paper over. 'The conversation should have happened five years ago' - with what? Deposition of witnesses that have come from the future to testify that the secret system that can bootstrap its own rules has not gotten out of hand and has been effective beyond their wildest dreams?

mtgx 13y ago

Time to change the laws then. These laws were rushed through Congress with little public debate, and whenever EFF or ACLU tried to fight them the Obama administration tried to dismiss the cases or stop them somehow. I want to see the constitutionality of scooping 100 million phone records at once, gathering all data from ISP cables, and asking Google and others for probably thousands if not millions of users' profiles and logs at once, being tested in Court, and I want it all to reach the Supreme Court. Then we can establish how legal everything was. You can't trust Congress with any of the laws they've been passing. Remember the NDAA and the indefinite detention clause? That was another one rushed through around new year's eve time. This needs to stop, or I can't ever take them seriously when they say "it's all legal".

rickmode 13y ago
Indeed. The question isn't whether the surveillance was legal, but rather if the laws allowing it are constitutional.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

bambax 13y ago

The word "intelligence" should really not be used to describe this program. In Latin intelligere means "to understand"; an "intelligent" person is a clever person. What the NSA is doing is gathering ALL possible information in the remote chance that an infinite part of it might maybe be useful some day. At the time of collection, no effort is made to assess the relevance of the information collected. This is not clever or "intelligent" in any sense of the term. "Intelligence" for an intelligence agency means doing actual spy work; namely, having agents infiltrate terrorist networks and learn about their plans (and risking their lives in the process). This is carpet-bombing. This is cowardly. This is despicable.

bmmayer1 13y ago

"US law" is not a valid justification. Segregation was US law. Slavery was US law. The detention of Japanese Americans during WWII was US law. "It's the law" is a useless moral justification unless the law is grounded in something greater than merely the paper it is written on. Especially when it is written by the government who uses it to defend their creeping invasions of our liberty. The reason we have a Constitution is to constrain the power of the government to make such laws, and if such laws do exist, they are (or should be) considered invalid.

dnautics 13y ago
exactly. The argument this guy is making is structurally equivalent to if the courts told Korematsu, "the conversation about internment should have happened in 1941, when congress gave the military broad powers to prosecute the war. If you didn't want the military to intern civilians, you would have written a prohibition against the power of internment into the declaration of war."