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NSA Rejection of Digital FOIA
- jasonkolb 13y agoAbsolute crap. Denied by an executive order, which is not legislated law and definitely does NOT supersede the law that put the FOIA process into place. This is garbage.
- johng 13y agoWe can't tell you if we are monitoring you. Or what capabilities for monitoring we have. Despite you being a US citizen which we would have no reason to monitor. Scary stuff folks.
- sageikosa 13y agoYou can't expect the secret police to divulge their secrets.
- whaevr 13y agoOoh gestapit..
- PavlovsCat 13y agoJust like you can't expect a scorpion not to sting? So far, the main argument for the continued existence of secret police A is the existence of antagonistic secret police B. Even the "bad guys". Sounds like a great opportunity for an AI of the future: "find any group of people working together against everyone else, start subtracting members from the group until coherence reaches 0". That would deal with the spooks and the ones that create work for them in one swoop. Ahhh, I can dream, can't I.
- sliverstorm 13y agoIf they are trying to avoid divulging capabilities to foreign agencies, what does your citizenship have to do with anything? "I know it's Top Secret, but I'm a citizen! It's ok, you can tell me"
- sawyer 13y agoLast week: We'd be happy to respond to requests submitted via the handy dandy online form - these paper copies are invalid. Today: We're sorry, if we told you of the existence or non-existence of data about you it would help terrorists.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago"I know," says spook1 to spook2, "We'll put up a web page where the rubes can enter their address, and have it automatically send them a FOIA_GLOMAR_GO_JUMP_IN_A_LAKE_HA_HA.pdf"
- redblacktree 13y agoThey responded. They just denied the request.
- genwin 13y agotl;dr: Dear FOIA requestor, You get nothing, by law. It's for your own protection. Sincerely, NSA
- fourply 13y agoYou missed a spot in p1 with the case number.
- jstreebin 13y agoOops, thanks
- driverdan 13y agoJarrett, can you post higher res images or an OCRed version? Those images are so small the text is about 4pt on my screen.
- RyanMcGreal 13y agoI cannot confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of a sense of humour, irony or shame on the part of the poor functionary who had to send out that response.
- raintrees 13y agoOne of my favorite lines from Men In Black: "We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we are aware of."
- JunkDNA 13y agoIf you are the sort of person who is surprised by this, you need to get out from under the rock you live under. This is what any self-respecting intelligence gathering organization is going to say. Not revealing whether or not information exists (let alone the actual information itself) has been a staple of the trade from the very beginning of the intelligence community. This response would be identical regardless of current events. edit: typos
- jsmcgd 13y agoHere's how I interpreted the letter: "We cannot confirm or deny the thing you requested exists because that thing you requested is classified". Unless all FOIA fail, it seems to me, in some broad sense, that they just confirmed the existence of the requested material.
- ethomson 13y agoI'm pretty sure that actually means that even the knowledge of existence is classified, as per the "details about them remain classified and/or protected from release..."
- vorporeal 13y agoI think it's more of "The information you requested, were it to exist, would be highly classified (due to its type), and therefore we can neither confirm nor deny its existence."
- ctdonath 13y agoRead as "We cannot confirm or deny the thing you requested exists because if it exists/existed it would be classified, and that includes your request of whether it exists."
- SCAQTony 13y agoI read it this way: "we are asserting our 5th amendment right to neither confirm or deny we violated your 4th and 5th amendment rights so you can't sue us and have some uppity judge make us follow the law."
- joering2 13y agoWere we to provide positive or negative responses to requests such as yours, our adversaries' compilation of the information provided would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security. simple as that: we can't tell you what you want to know, because we think you are a terrorist.
- breakbread 13y agoI received pretty much the exact same response in the mail yesterday. http://i.imgur.com/CFgQ0eM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/CFgQ0eM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yVEvptE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yVEvptE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/inUUStL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/inUUStL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/qVGtdTj.jpg http://i.imgur.com/qVGtdTj.jpg
- vaadu 13y agoI'm surprised they actually replied to you. A reply is admitting they exist, which they can not confirm nor deny.
- pionar 13y agoA reply does no such thing. They can say that your request is denied without even looking to see if the information exists first. They're not saying, "It's there, we're just not going to admit it." They're saying "We're not even going to begin looking for it."
- yebyen 13y agoI think gp was saying: to reply to your letter is to confirm the existence of the body, the NSA itself, who received and replied to your request. Now we know they exist!!!
- dhimes 13y agoWe always knew NSA existed. Some of the other guys, however...
- sliverstorm 13y agoI suppose at least this means they have yet to pull "the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled" ("convincing the world he doesn't exist")
- coldcode 13y agoHmm what would happen if the entire (US) Hacker News readership sent in an FOIA request at the same time. Maybe we can destroy their photocopiers?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ctdonath 13y agoTaxes on American HN readers would increase accordingly to cover costs of buying & operating new copiers.
- alanh 13y agoDebt, rather. Expenses and taxes are divorced: it’s the deficit!
- ghjm 13y ago"Each agency may promulgate regulations, pursuant to notice and receipt of public comment, providing for the aggregation of certain requests by the same requestor, or by a group of requestors acting in concert, if the agency reasonably believes that such requests actually constitute a single request, which would otherwise satisfy the unusual circumstances specified in this subparagraph, and the requests involve clearly related matters." They would just publish one response and send us all a link to it.
- malkia 13y agoBe careful! This might look in someone's eyes as subversive action.
- schrodinger 13y agoPs, I've heard that apple will replace your iPhone for those purple specs in the pictures.
- jstreebin 13y agoOh sick! Thanks! Yeah, my camera has gone to shit. I'll take it in next time I'm near a store
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rsingel 13y agoThis what's known as a Glomar response: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response That developed in law thanks to the press uncovering a secret, massive sunken-sub-raising boat built by Howard Hughes for the CIA to retrieve a lost Soviet sub (yes, the very thing that The Hunt for Red October was based on).
- darkarmani 13y ago> Lower court precedent has thus far ruled the Glomar response to have potential merit, if the secretive nature of the material truly requires it, and only if the agency provides "as much information as possible" to justify its claim. Otherwise, the principles established in FOIA may trump claims to secrecy. Is it required if they have no data collected and the subject isn't under investigation?
- dfc 13y agoIs what required?
- sp332 13y agoWhen did the NSA start using Georgia? I always thought Times New Roman was more "official".
- redblacktree 13y agoAwesome. A comment on typography. :)
- sp332 13y agoWell, it's not like there's any content in this letter to look at :p
- achughes 13y agoNSA probably just wants to look more approachable /s
- dsl 13y agoJust recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844063
- edraferi 13y agoSurprisingly well-written response actually. Not too hard to figure out what they're talking about.
- agarden 13y agoThe logic makes sense if you assume that the NSA is only using the data to target terrorists. In that scenario, the danger isn't that they will reveal to innocent civilians that they have your data. The danger is the precedent. Want to know if you are on their target list? File a FOIA. If they grant it, you're okay. If they deny it, you're in their sights. But since we already know that they are collecting this metadata on absolutely everyone, I don't see what good it does to refuse to send it to you, whether you are a suspected terrorist or not. ...I suppose you could be fretting about whether you had slipped up and called Cousin Guido on your regular cell instead of a throw-away prepaid phone.
- tsaoutourpants 13y agoI hope that someone fights this. :) Just because the NSA determines that something is exempt from FOIA doesn't mean that their determination is lawful. I belive a court will rule that since it is entirely public that they've collected the information, as well as how they've collected it, and there have been government officials who have admitted to the program, their claim of exemption is improper.