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NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls
- detcader 13y agoA baseball player lied to Congress and got charged with perjury. James Clapper lied to Congress, all the politicians listed in this article lied to the U.S. public, and what will they get? Industry jobs and high positions when they leave office. Capital rewards behavior benefiting capital.
- quantumpotato_ 13y agoPlease get published so an audience beyond HN can read.
- graedus 13y agoChris Hayes basically wrote this book already - Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
- ajslater 13y agoGlen Greenwald - With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful http://www.amazon.com/With-Liberty-Justice-Some-Equality/dp/1250013836 http://www.amazon.com/With-Liberty-Justice-Some-Equality/dp/... Discusses the era from Watergate to early Obama shielding Bush officials and telecoms.
- detcader 13y agoHaha you mean me? Maybe someday.. (you can find my blog among my submissions if you were really expressing interest in more writing from me)
- quantumpotato_ 13y agoLink me?
- w_t_payne 13y agoSo much for being "equal under the law". If you cannot trust the law to protect you, you must assume that it is being used against you.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tlogan 13y agoAll animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
- SimHacker 13y agoSounds like PHP or JavaScript! As Alex Coles @myabc tweeted: truthy || falsy values – like JS, @BrendanEich also has issues with equality – http://projects.latimes.com/prop8/donation/8930/ http://projects.latimes.com/prop8/donation/8930/
- anigbrowl 13y agoDubious syllogism. Baseball players certainly reward capital, in spades. by all accounts, overweening NSA surveillance is hurting capital as Europeans in particular seek other vendors for cloud services. Not to mention the fact that baseball is a sport of entertainment, and is you strike out people won't be blaming the deaths of others on you.
- 001sky 13y agoalt 1: capitol rewards capital alt 2: capital rewards capitol
- detcader 13y agoThere's no baseball lobby, at least not one that would care about an individual player, and I'm sure a couple of Europeans dropping Gmail is not going to make any lobbyists upset at these politicians for trying to defend their special interests (through lying or otherwise)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- madaxe 13y agoOn the note of lying, Obama just explicitly denied exactly this in his press conference an hour or so ago.
- stefantalpalaru 13y agoHe just gave the least untruthful answer he could give ;-)
- madaxe 13y agoCapitol rewards behaviour benefiting capital. FTFY!
- leepowers 13y agoInvestigating a baseball player carries little or no risk for a politician. It's a safe, easy political win. Worse yet: even the richest athlete in the world is at a grave disadvantage when confronted by the enormous power and resources of the federal government. These type of vanity investigations are nothing more than the institutional bullying of a private individual for political gain. It's frustrating and furthers the perception that congress is filled with opportunistic cowards.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ewheeler 13y agoI wonder what are the differences between the "Sweet* and Sour* Partitions" of PINWALE?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bmiranda 13y agoIt's disheartening that despite the continual stream of information pouring in about the NSA the average citizen remains comparatively indifferent and the media and most representatives seem to be supportive of the NSA's activities. That being said, I wouldn't go as far as to say the average American doesn't care, just that their reaction in light of these leaks is underwhelming. I don't believe that the slide towards total surveillance (or anything for that matter) is inevitable, but I would much appreciate confronting mass surveillance now as opposed to 10-20 years down the road.
- albeertoni 13y agoSchneier linked to a study that might explain why some people don't seem concerned about their information being collected for secret government programs. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/secret_informat.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/secret_informa... Of course, there's also the "I've done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide,"-type folks, and people who are generally authoritarian too.
- pygy_ 13y agoClassified texts may be seen as more accurate and reliable because they are assumed to be free of any attempt to manipulate the public. I didn't read the paywalled paper, they may already cover this hypothesis.
- grecy 13y ago> It's disheartening that despite the continual stream of information pouring in about the NSA the average citizen remains comparatively indifferent The reality is that tens of millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet, working multiple jobs, juggling credit cards, mortgage payments, car payments and trying to get by with little to no healthcare. These people are too swamped by the day to day to have the time or energy to look around at the bigger picture. Life is too hard already.
- lazyjones 13y ago> That being said, I wouldn't go as far as to say the average American doesn't care, just that their reaction in light of these leaks is underwhelming. Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog situation. What is now somehow acceptable, would have been outrageous a dozen years ago. In a few months' time people will have accepted that the NSA is spying on US citizens without a warrant. This is why it is inevitable that the US will become a totalitarian surveillance state - if the political establishment chooses to go down that road.
- pcunite 13y agoA comment to the artilce by a "Strummered" "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty". - Thomas Jefferson All we have now are corporate lawyers and stooges.
- rhizome 13y ago"When the government fears the people, there is liberty". And the way in which the government can fear the people is through a revolt of the secret-keepers. Probably why all the sysadmins are getting fired, as a possible admission that the NSA doesn't know who of their own they can trust.
- gruseom 13y agoNot only did Jefferson not say that, it wasn't even attributed to him until 1994. http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fears-people-there-libertyquotation http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fea...
- mariusz79 13y agoWith my tin-foil hat on, I'm wondering if this whole Snowden thing isn't just to make people numb to the idea that they are being watched 24/7. And it seems that people don't care about privacy we can only expect things to get worse.
- sage_joch 13y agoI've considered this too, but I haven't seen any signs of deception in Snowden's words or actions. As a counter-example, consider Obama's 2008 campaign. Many people were deceived by his speeches on civil liberties, myself included. But even then there were legitimate misgivings with his Senate voting record. I have had no such misgivings about Snowden. His words and actions ring true.
- maaku 13y agoI don't think he was implying that Snowden is not as he presents himself to be, just that the outcome of all this might be apathy.
- MisterWebz 13y agoThat's ridiculous. You think they would self-inflict this huge PR nightmare upon themselves? They were doing perfectly fine before the leaks, getting cooperation from major tech companies and other countries and their reach was constantly expanding. It's silly to think they'd give all that up by setting in motion something which could potentially piss of its own citizens and its allies, just for the off chance that people might become numb to it. Then what happens? They continue their operations just the same way they did before?
- cavilling_elite 13y agoI don't think this is the case. But on a smaller scale: The Bush administration would put out a piece of legislation that was a hyperbole, watch the public/democrats react, then ram through a "less worse" bill in the guise of compromise.
- tjoff 13y ago
- brown9-2 13y agoI'm a bit confused on what the actual "backdoor" here is: "While the FAA 702 minimization procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data," the glossary states, "analysts may NOT/NOT [not repeat not] implement any USP [US persons] queries until an effective oversight process has been developed by NSA and agreed to by DOJ/ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]." The term "identifiers" is NSA jargon for information relating to an individual, such as telephone number, email address, IP address and username as well as their name. The document – which is undated, though metadata suggests this version was last updated in June 2012 – does not say whether the oversight process it mentions has been established or whether any searches against US person names have taken place. This seems to suggest that procedures allow for the name of a United States person when querying data collected under FAA 702 (for example, they could search for intercepted communications where the parties referred to the President by name); however, no analyst is allowed to do so until an oversight procedure is developed and approved. Is that the entire backdoor? That the name of a US person can be used as a search term?
- diminoten 13y agoIt looks like you can search the communications of US persons who interacted with non-US persons by using the US person's name.
- brown9-2 13y agoIt sounds like the minimization procedures allow you to search for any US person's name, not necessarily to find the intercepted communications between a foreign person and that specific US person. For example, to find communications where parties A and B were discussing US Person C.
- microDude 13y agoI am glad I live in Oregon where my representative (Ron Wyden) is actually offering some resistance.
- john_b 13y ago> "702 is focused outside the United States at non-citizens," said Adam Schiff, a member of the House intelligence committee. "The evidence of the effectiveness of 702 is much more substantial than 215 [the bulk phone records collection]. So I think there are fewer fourth amendment concerns and more evidence of the saliency of the program." Here is as clear an admission as we will ever get that despite all the lip service politicians are paying to "tradeoffs" between security and liberty, all they really care about is providing the appearance of security at any cost. Apparently, when a law is deemed to be "effective" it justifies "fewer fourth amendment concerns". One wonders if rounding up (aka "rendering) political activists or people like Glen Greenwald would justify fewer First Amendment concerns. When did the Fourth Amendment become a nice little luxury that Americans jettisoned as soon as rumors of terrorists doing bad things started circulating?
- SimHacker 13y agoThey traded the Fourth Amendment in for two Second Amendments.
- declan 13y agoThe FBI director publicly assured Rep. Nadler (D-NY) in June that FedGov needed a "particularized" order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to target U.S. citizens: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/jQ71osLy7UJ https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/jQ71osLy... Someone's lying. Right?
- kin3tic 13y agoWait, where are the HN bigwigs to tell us how we're over-reacting and this is all bullshit from two months ago? Strange, all of them seem to have shut up and sauntered off as the leaks have continued.
- beefxq 13y agoThis is the end.
- laxatives 13y agoI don't understand why we even use terminology like "loophole" or "allows". I don't think the NSA really gives a shit about the legality of any of the this.