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Watchdog Report Says N.S.A. Program Is Illegal and Should End
- rhizome 13y agoI'd say it was cowardly and poor leadership for Obama to get this report and still half-step his speech, if not anti-democratic. There's something he won't tell us.
- nwh 13y agoSomewhere there's a bunch of people thinking "at least that's all that's been leaked".
- dclowd9901 13y agoWhat? You thought a lame duck president was going to up and dismantle a trillion dollar defense measure? Come on...
- ItendToDisagree 13y agoOr that someone who was a 'constitutional expert', and ran on "Hope and Change" for two consecutive terms would risk nothing politically (in terms of re-election) to dismantle what is obviously an unconstitutional measure? "COME ON!" -Gob Bluth
- dclowd9901 13y agoIndeed; it wasn't until very recently that I regretted re-electing him. Then again, I can't imagine Romney would've behaved any different. God damn two-party system.
- rhizome 13y agoIf you allow for the possibility that the military is actually in charge of determining US foreign policy, we can conclude that Romney would have done the same thing.
- sigil 13y agoBrand also worried that declaring that counterterrorism officials “have been operating this program unlawfully for years” could damage morale and make agencies overly cautious in taking steps to protect the country. It's great to have another voice speaking up against mass surveillance. Still -- you're telling me these agencies are in all likelihood committing crimes against the American people, but we need to be careful not to hurt their feelings?
- dragonwriter 13y ago> But you're telling me these agencies are committing a crime against the American people, and we need to be careful not to hurt their feelings? Its worse than that: we have to be careful to avoid making them cautious about committing crimes against the American people, the rule of law, and the Constitutional order of government.
- gareim 13y agoWell, it makes sense that she'd say that since she's one of the two that rejected that the program is illegal. I've been reading Tim Weiner's Enemies, a history of the FBI and one thing stuck with me. That was that there was a period of time when the FBI was incredibly useless because of a previous Supreme Court ruling that wiretapping was illegal and then FBI agents all began to misunderstand what they could and couldn't do. That lead to a breakdown in communication and procedure between different offices and several terrorists that could have been caught slipped by. I'm not saying that Brand is right, but there is reason to worry that this could happen again. What needs to be done is a clear declaration of our fundamental rights and a watchdog court that won't let the agencies overstep in their pursuit of justice. The agents have to know their boundaries, we have to know their boundaries, and we have to know that they know their boundaries. The whole FISA court stuff is ridiculous.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoIt would be wonderful if all wiretaps were ruled illegal. It would also be wonderful if all law enforcement officers were required to wear uniforms or identify themselves when in the course of their duties.
- jonnybgood 13y agoAccording to the article, three out of five members of the board held the opinion the program was illegal. That's a little bit different than what the title of the article suggests.
- ItendToDisagree 13y agoThe other two insisted that no one should look into the legality.
- kordless 13y agoI'm OK if they want to look at my data. I just want to know who and when they look at it and how much they are going to pay me for it. 1,000 Bitcoin gets you everything I have data-wise.
- grecy 13y agoIt should be: Watchdog Report Says N.S.A. Program Is Illegal and those involved must be imprisoned. Anything less is unacceptable.
- hooande 13y agoThe NSA has committed no crimes. As an organization, they've acted within the bounds of the law and done exactly what they were supposed to do. This watchdog report is saying that the law is not in the interest of the people and it should be changed. But until that happens, the NSA is in the right to continue with business as usual. Our constitution prohibits ex post facto law. This means that someone can't be charged with violating a law that was not in effect at the time of the person's action. ie, if the the speed limit is lowered to 50mph on Tuesday, you can't be ticketed for having driven 55mph on Monday. This should apply to the NSA in the same way that it applies to citizens. We may not like the law, but we can't call them criminals, dictators or all around bad guys for playing by the rules as they were written at the time. It's also important to note that the NSA currently has the support of the people and the people's representatives. If 80% of the country hated the law that allows blanket collection of business records then it would have been changed long ago. The issue is 50/50 at best among the people and much more lopsided in favor among members of congress. Changing the law will be difficult at this point, as it's supposed to be. The whole point of a democratic bureaucracy is that they are stable and slow to change. We can't routinely re-write laws that are disliked by 40% or even 50% of the people and lawmakers. In general, it's bad for business. It's difficult to plan for the future when a relatively small group of citizens can throw out the rules in a short time period. If the NSA had some kind of effect on the life of the average citizen this law would be rescinded immediately. If that doesn't end up happening, it's going to take a lot more than personal interpretations of the constitution to get the federal government to give up capability and assets it spent a lot of time and money building. This law may change and the country may be better without it. If anything it will be a long time until the majority of people make up their minds or even form an opinion on this issue. Until then the NSA is going to what all of us do: pursue their goals while acting within the boundaries of the law.
- dmix 13y ago> If 80% of the country hated the law that allows blanket collection of business records then it would have been changed long ago. Source? If one thing I've learned from this whole thing is that the general public holds a very dangerous belief in some high-functioning state of representative democracy. A combination of crippled public dissent and (state-supported) public ignorance makes me highly question a strong majority of opinion would make a difference in real-life politics. Let alone active protest among a minority. This isn't SOPA where it's people against lobbyists and special interests. This is against internal government power. The stakes are much higher.
- higherpurpose 13y agoI really want all of this to go through the Supreme Court before Congress decides either way on it, because I worry they will pass some laws that make this only slightly less awful, but at the same time make all current lawsuits irrelevant. If there's one lawsuit say regarding the Patriot Act, and the Patriot Act get repealed and then replaced with something else in the meantime, does the lawsuit still continue, for example? But even if it does, and let's say it says it's completely unconstitutional and whatnot, that still wouldn't apple to the "new law" that is slightly less awful, would it? It would require a new lawsuit against those specific provisions, right? So this is what I'm worried about, and why I'd prefer all this goes through the Supreme Court before Congress starts passing new surveillance laws, because then they'd have a much lower chance of passing something that's already been declared unconstitutional in a new law.
- pstack 13y agoThe whole "and should end" thing always makes me laugh. Oh, we just determined that violating the constitutional limitations on government is against the constitution, so we're going to stop violating the constitution, now. None of these idiots thought they were doing anything but violating the law for the past several decades. They just didn't care. And they still don't. And they won't. This big display right now is nothing but that - a display. At most, they'll throw out some "oh, gosh, we will put in regulations or stop it all together"... while they continue to do exactly as they please behind the scenes. There is no return from this. It is done.
- IgorPartola 13y agoI disagree. American history is full of government actions that were later found unconstitutional and were abandoned and condemned. Think about slavery, women's voting rights, mistreatment of the Japanese during WWII, McCarthyism, segregation and the civil rights movement, and now finally marriage equality. These things unfortunately take longer than a few months to get shut down, but they do stop.
- pdkl95 13y ago> but they do stop Well.. * The NSA imbroglio resembles McCarthyism in some ways. * Segregation and civil rights are still significant issues in some parts of the country; the battle has simply moved away from "offical" fights into more indirect fighting using tactics like "school vouchers" and "redlining". * Muslims and people of Arab descent are mistreated rather badly at times. * Women's suffrage hasn't been in question for a while now, but there are certainly a lot of attacks against women in recent politics with significant attacks against abortion rights and women's healthcare in general. * We don't call it slavery, but the prison–industrial complex has a LOT to answer for, and is a growing problem.
- IgorPartola 13y agoI am not saying that things are peachy. I agree with all of your examples. What I am saying is that less than a hundred years ago women could not vote and the official stance on that was that it's constitutional. Less than fifty years ago it was perfectly legal to pay women less than men just because they are women. It is now illegal. The point is that things like what the NSA is doing are clearly illegal in my mind and I think 20 years from now our kids will look back and say "how did you let this happen?" but it will be made illegal. Will the spy agencies and over-reaching corporate entities continue trying to find a way to circumvent the new laws and the interpretations of the old laws? Absolutely. However, we will have made progress. I guess this brings up the grand question: will we ever reach enlightenment enough to stop spying and oppressing our own citizens, denizens, visitors, and allies? I think it'll take a few centuries but yes. Eventually I think we will get there through lots of lessons learned the hard way.
- midas007 13y agoI'd like a return to sanity, civility and proportionate responses.
- IgorPartola 13y agoI guess I don't see how what the NSA is doing would not be unconstitutional and illegal. I don't care about the mechanics of how it's actually done but wiretapping requires probably cause and a warrant. Fishing expeditions are not legal. The fact that it's not listened to directly by a human but instead stored for later processing has nothing to do with the fact that it's wiretapping. Creating a secret court that is a rubber stamp of approval for broad warrants does not make it legal. I actually wonder what would happen if the government was to prosecute someone where the only evidence they had was obtained via this illegal wiretap. Would the evidence gathered this way actually hold up. I know the point of this is not the due process but to detect terrorist plots, but the legal hypothetical is interesting.
- dllthomas 13y agoWhen they have evidence collected from these sources, they basically pretend it's from other sources. See "parallel construction."
- martindale 13y agoWho do we send to jail?
- Zelphyr 13y agoI would submit that MANY of the laws our Federal government passes are unconstitutional (10th Amendment). Yet they go and do it anyway and we go and vote in another worthless fuck who got there by pandering to us and promising more unconstitutional laws. WE ARE TO BLAME! They may be the bullet that felled the murder victim but we pulled the trigger.
- rayiner 13y agoThe text of the 10th amendment is this: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." I submit that nothing can be unconstitutional for violation of the 10th amendment that isn't unconstitutional for some other reason. There is no law that can be justified as an exercise of one of the enumerated powers that nonetheless fails for contravention of the 10th amendment, because any law that can be justified on the basis of an enumerated power + the necessary and proper clause is one that is "delegated to the United States by the Constitution" and thus, literally, not within the scope of the 10th amendment. Take the healthcare mandate. You can't argue that the 10th amendment makes the healthcare mandate unconstitutional, because it was found to be a valid exercise of the taxing power, which is a power delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
- zmanian 13y agoAfter 6 months of anti-mass surveillance activism,I'd like to share an insight with the community. The problem with the NSA is not just one or more illegal program but their operating culture and philosophy. The NSA has gone into the business of preemptively acquiring capabilities(subverted systems,large scale databases, zero days, malware, etc) and then marketing those capabilities to other institutions from law enforcement to foreign governments. The NSA leverages the classification system, deception and parallel construction to evade judicial and legislative review on how those capabilities are used. This approach to covert actions means that there is no part of society that the NSA will not attack to stockpile a capability for some unspecified future use.
- zmanian 13y agoFull text of the report http://www.scribd.com/doc/201740642/Final-Report-1-23-14 http://www.scribd.com/doc/201740642/Final-Report-1-23-14
- jmharvey 13y agoThe NSA didn't break the law. People at the NSA broke the law. They need to be held to account.