4 ms·

It is infuriating to see SO many articles, even from publications that can usually be trusted, referring to this legislation as "commendable" or "significant re

by fourply 11y ago

It is infuriating to see SO many articles, even from publications that can usually be trusted, referring to this legislation as "commendable" or "significant reform". It is far from it, and we can't expect the couch-dwellers to pay attention while the dying gasps of the 4th estate trumpet this kind of non-change.

herbig 11y ago
The quote you're referring to is "The new legislation, while it is commendable as far as it goes, contains some obvious shortcomings."
- rosser 11y ago
  But the full quote would mitigate the raging hate-on the grandparent is sporting. Yes, the USA Freedom Act is limited. Yes, it doesn't change all the things we'd all like to see changed. "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It's at least movement in the right direction. Let's try celebrating that, instead of (or at least along with) bitching that it's not movement far enough.
  - fourply 11y ago
    It's unconstitutional. Of course I have a raging hate-on - I believe in the rule of law.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Phone metadata collection is Constitutional under Smith v. Maryland.
  - shit_parade2 11y ago
    And bad is brother of worse. Slogans are easy, what's hard is recognizing the difference between political theater and meaningful change. America is tumbling into the abyss of tyranny and people celebrate.
    - rosser 11y ago
      I'm not saying "Yay tyranny!" and to characterize my position thusly is, frankly, shitty discourse. I'm saying, "Ooh, look: teeny, tiny step back from the level of tyranny we had yesterday. Nice!" I would hope anyone who hates tyranny would see merit in that. Now, yes, if that's all we get, then being pissed and — more importantly, doing something about it — is warranted. But I choose to look at this as a first step, while you and others appear to regard it as appeasement and a pat on the head. Not much I can do for you there.
      - shit_parade2 11y ago
        When you celebrate political theater that reaffirms the status quo with some window dressing you are essentially saying "yay, tyranny". Dismissing criticism with a flippant "perfect is the enemy of the good" is lazy and thoughtless. The government has shown no interest in curtailing the vast surveillance apparatus it has built, nor does it show interest in investigating its own abuses of such power. When people praise such drivel as the freedom act it only sets us all back on the road to tyranny. So yeah, your perspective is detrimental to improving the dire circumstances we find ourselves.
        rosser 11y ago
        If all I'd said was the quip you quoted, your position might have merit. Instead, you're selectively quoting my rather measured comment and calling me "lazy and thoughtless". Thanks. EDIT: You know what I think has people the most pissed off in all of this? That their illusions about America having been a particularly "free" country in the first place are being shattered. I'm reminded of nothing quite so much as the virulence I've seen in former, incredibly ardent Obama supporters, when they realized how much of a tool he actually was. Those of us who knew he was a tool from the beginning? Not so pissed when his true colors came out. (And, no, I'm not a Republican, nor a Libertarian. I just realized a long time ago how corrupt the American political process is, and engage with it with that principle in mind.)
Someone1234 11y ago
And let's assume for a second that they did introduce actual reform. All that would happen is that they would go back to pre-9/11 spying on Americans. Let me explain how that worked... So pre-9/11 the NSA wasn't allowed to spy on Americans (in most cases), so instead they paid the UK's GCHQ to spy on Americans for them and then relayed the intelligence to the NSA for analysis. This was and still is a perfectly legal loophole. There are no limits on cooperation with other intelligence agencies. When 9/11 happened the NSA got effectively a blank cheque and asked to increase intelligence gathering significantly, so instead of continuing the GCHQ misdirection they simply expanded spying within the US and then legalised it (via executive order at the time, law later). So the NSA was spying on Americans in the 1990s, they just had to do more legal maneuvering to do it. It just got significantly worse in the 2000s and they dropped even pretending that they weren't. Even if a stronger law outlawed spying on Americans, you'd just see them go back to the GCHQ way. PS - A lot of Americans seem to want the NSA spying on "foreigners" without realising that that effectively opens the door to the NSA spying on Americans. That way a call between a US citizen and anyone from abroad can be listened in on. PPS - Don't even get me started on the NSA's spying on behalf of US corporations, that's a whole other can of worms.
- fixermark 11y ago
  Cooperation between GCHQ and the NSA certainly didn't end post-9/11. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04...
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  That's why such reforms need to be accompanied by appropriate reductions in NSA's budget. If the NSA required $5 billion a year to sustain the bulk collection of phone metadata of most Americans, then its budget should be cut by $5 billion, if it's now supposedly "ended". If the budget remains the same or even increases the following year, then clearly something is not right there and the NSA will just use that money to "keep" the program in some other place and through some other methods. Unfortunately, since the "Defund the NSA" bill that almost passed the House after the first Snowden revelations, I haven't seen any discussion about doing that. The civil liberties organizations should've pushed for a similar law within 3 months afterwards and ensure it passes then.
ipsin 11y ago
The USA Today headline was "NSA Data Collection Ended". I don't even know what to do with something so far from the truth.
- themartorana 11y ago
  In the end, they probably couldn't have asked for a better outcome. Collection continues, warrants are still unnecessary if you go about it the right way.
- yodsanklai 11y ago
  I've just heard similar reports on French radio. For some reasons, they forgot to mention that nothing has changed concerning the surveillance of non-US citizens. This leads to a question: in the movie Citizenfour, Snowden explains that the NSA uses british surveillance system when they need information that they can't legally obtain in the US. I'm wondering, under this new "freedom act", can the NSA legally query the british system to access information about US citizen?

by fourply 11y ago

herbig 11y ago

The quote you're referring to is "The new legislation, while it is commendable as far as it goes, contains some obvious shortcomings."

rosser 11y ago
But the full quote would mitigate the raging hate-on the grandparent is sporting. Yes, the USA Freedom Act is limited. Yes, it doesn't change all the things we'd all like to see changed. "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It's at least movement in the right direction. Let's try celebrating that, instead of (or at least along with) bitching that it's not movement far enough.
- fourply 11y ago
  It's unconstitutional. Of course I have a raging hate-on - I believe in the rule of law.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Phone metadata collection is Constitutional under Smith v. Maryland.
- shit_parade2 11y ago
  And bad is brother of worse. Slogans are easy, what's hard is recognizing the difference between political theater and meaningful change. America is tumbling into the abyss of tyranny and people celebrate.
  - rosser 11y ago
    I'm not saying "Yay tyranny!" and to characterize my position thusly is, frankly, shitty discourse. I'm saying, "Ooh, look: teeny, tiny step back from the level of tyranny we had yesterday. Nice!" I would hope anyone who hates tyranny would see merit in that. Now, yes, if that's all we get, then being pissed and — more importantly, doing something about it — is warranted. But I choose to look at this as a first step, while you and others appear to regard it as appeasement and a pat on the head. Not much I can do for you there.
    - shit_parade2 11y ago
      When you celebrate political theater that reaffirms the status quo with some window dressing you are essentially saying "yay, tyranny". Dismissing criticism with a flippant "perfect is the enemy of the good" is lazy and thoughtless. The government has shown no interest in curtailing the vast surveillance apparatus it has built, nor does it show interest in investigating its own abuses of such power. When people praise such drivel as the freedom act it only sets us all back on the road to tyranny. So yeah, your perspective is detrimental to improving the dire circumstances we find ourselves.
      - rosser 11y ago
        If all I'd said was the quip you quoted, your position might have merit. Instead, you're selectively quoting my rather measured comment and calling me "lazy and thoughtless". Thanks. EDIT: You know what I think has people the most pissed off in all of this? That their illusions about America having been a particularly "free" country in the first place are being shattered. I'm reminded of nothing quite so much as the virulence I've seen in former, incredibly ardent Obama supporters, when they realized how much of a tool he actually was. Those of us who knew he was a tool from the beginning? Not so pissed when his true colors came out. (And, no, I'm not a Republican, nor a Libertarian. I just realized a long time ago how corrupt the American political process is, and engage with it with that principle in mind.)

Someone1234 11y ago

And let's assume for a second that they did introduce actual reform. All that would happen is that they would go back to pre-9/11 spying on Americans. Let me explain how that worked... So pre-9/11 the NSA wasn't allowed to spy on Americans (in most cases), so instead they paid the UK's GCHQ to spy on Americans for them and then relayed the intelligence to the NSA for analysis. This was and still is a perfectly legal loophole. There are no limits on cooperation with other intelligence agencies. When 9/11 happened the NSA got effectively a blank cheque and asked to increase intelligence gathering significantly, so instead of continuing the GCHQ misdirection they simply expanded spying within the US and then legalised it (via executive order at the time, law later). So the NSA was spying on Americans in the 1990s, they just had to do more legal maneuvering to do it. It just got significantly worse in the 2000s and they dropped even pretending that they weren't. Even if a stronger law outlawed spying on Americans, you'd just see them go back to the GCHQ way. PS - A lot of Americans seem to want the NSA spying on "foreigners" without realising that that effectively opens the door to the NSA spying on Americans. That way a call between a US citizen and anyone from abroad can be listened in on. PPS - Don't even get me started on the NSA's spying on behalf of US corporations, that's a whole other can of worms.

fixermark 11y ago
Cooperation between GCHQ and the NSA certainly didn't end post-9/11. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/how-we-know-the-nsa-had-access-to-internal-google-and-yahoo-cloud-data/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04...
higherpurpose 11y ago
That's why such reforms need to be accompanied by appropriate reductions in NSA's budget. If the NSA required $5 billion a year to sustain the bulk collection of phone metadata of most Americans, then its budget should be cut by $5 billion, if it's now supposedly "ended". If the budget remains the same or even increases the following year, then clearly something is not right there and the NSA will just use that money to "keep" the program in some other place and through some other methods. Unfortunately, since the "Defund the NSA" bill that almost passed the House after the first Snowden revelations, I haven't seen any discussion about doing that. The civil liberties organizations should've pushed for a similar law within 3 months afterwards and ensure it passes then.

ipsin 11y ago

The USA Today headline was "NSA Data Collection Ended". I don't even know what to do with something so far from the truth.

themartorana 11y ago
In the end, they probably couldn't have asked for a better outcome. Collection continues, warrants are still unnecessary if you go about it the right way.
yodsanklai 11y ago
I've just heard similar reports on French radio. For some reasons, they forgot to mention that nothing has changed concerning the surveillance of non-US citizens. This leads to a question: in the movie Citizenfour, Snowden explains that the NSA uses british surveillance system when they need information that they can't legally obtain in the US. I'm wondering, under this new "freedom act", can the NSA legally query the british system to access information about US citizen?