Court found NSA surveillance unconstitutional in 2011

http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/06/court-finds-nsa-surveillance.html

by replax • 13 years ago

444 120 13 years ago

blog.rongarret.info

pvnick• 13 years ago

Wonderful, just more ammunition to use on my Restore the Fourth rally event page

bmelton2• 13 years ago

Link?

mtgx• 13 years ago

http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth

http://www.reddit.com/r/rtforganizers

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

One of the things I don't really understand about the way laws work here in the US is when something like this happens. We will declare something unconstitutional and then its like "okay lets form a committee to make sure it doesn't happen again...whats that you say? What the NSA is doing is secret and we can't monitor it? Okay, well then just go on with what you're doing, I assume you're following the constitution now"

I mean, I feel like following the constitution is probably the most important thing we can encourage, and its basically like "meh, lets hope they stop violating the constitution". I simply do not get it. Priority #1 should be making sure that the NSA is following the constitution. There is 0 point in fighting foreign wars or anything like that until this is fixed. The NSA's budget should be reduced to 0 until there is 100% proof this has stopped.

Cowen• 13 years ago

There's nothing in the US legal code that creates consequences for disobeying the judicial branch's judgement.

Obeying them is a strong suggestion, and disobeying could conceivably be used as evidence in an impeachment trial, but that's about it.

This isn't a new issue either. It's over 150 years old. Andrew Jackson didn't even get a slap on the wrist for not enforcing the Supreme Court's ruling in Worcester v. Georgia.

thematt• 13 years ago

What about contempt of court?

saraid2162• 13 years ago

This isn't a new issue either.

Actually, it's one of the fundamental checks and balances. The judiciary has no executive power. The reason a conviction in court sucks for the defendant is because the executive branch actors enforce that conviction by taking the convict to jail.

chris_mahan4• 13 years ago

The people who vote for the NSA budget don't know what they are voting for, because the NSA activities that the budget is paying for are State Secrets.

Also, of course, these activities are Very Important so America can win the War on Terror and eliminate Al Qaeda and all the other Evil People in the whole World, so, as a Senator, you would find yourself hard-pressed for raising your re-election campaign funds if you were to "side with the terrorists" and failed to approve the budget for these secret activities.

pionar• 13 years ago

Oh, they know. Legislators have pretty high clearance.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

In theory, the Congress achieves this power by their ability to approve appointments by the President. However they have greatly diminished the impact of that power by allowing partisan politics to pollute the business of vetting someone for competence.

chris_mahan4• 13 years ago

A quote by Joseph Goebbels:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Who was Joseph Goebbels? Per Wikipedia: Paul Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels)

spoiledtechie• 13 years ago

I can't upvote this enough...

redofrac2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't put so much emphasis on the source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Misattributed

chris_mahan4• 13 years ago

Well, if people go read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie then perhaps the light will start to shine in their minds.

<sarcasm>And what? You dare to question the absolute veracity of wikipedia? You will be sent to the Re-Education Camp immediately?</sarcasm>

<notsarcasm>Having to use the sarcasm tag means enough people are unable to recognize sarcasm. I blame the education system. It's a damn shame though.</notsarcasm>

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

Interesting, there are still correctly attributed points that fit this whole debacle:

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success."

"War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler

I'm referring to the constant reuse of the term 'no direct access to servers'cough propaganda cough

ginko• 13 years ago

There are people who don't know who Goebbels was?

jlgreco6• 13 years ago

Hopefully not, but I have stopped being surprised by such things.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

There are plenty of people all over the world who would not recognize the name. They might even express their appreciation for his sentiment, as well.

RivieraKid• 13 years ago

Yes, me for example and I don't think there's anything wrong about it.

nsmartt2• 13 years ago

How should I approach learning more about this sort of thing? I mean obviously reading about Nazi Germany, but what sort of materials? I had no idea who Goebbels was.

mhartl• 13 years ago

Of course there must be many, but the parent comment drew particular attention to this possibility. Using the Economist house style offers an elegant alternative, wherein virtually all people and organizations are identified explicitly, no matter how prominent. For example, you might see "Google, a search giant", "GE, an American conglomerate", or "Tim Cook, boss of Apple". In this case, the first line of the post could be changed to "A quote by Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany:", and the final paragraph could be eliminated.

anologwintermut• 13 years ago

Funny, that quote could be said about the "FISA ruled PRISM unconstitutional" mantra that is implied in the title. We have no idea if FISA ruled about PRISM, if they feds changed it to comply with those rulings, or it was something else completely. We ought to know and that in and of it self is enough.

pattisapu2• 13 years ago

Correct. This is an awfully misleading title. The blogs cite blogs upon blogs, not any actual court filings, which do not reveal any ruling whatsoever about the merits of the constitutional matters. The coverage of this looks like an out of control telephone game.

run4yourlives9• 13 years ago

Hacker News has officially jumped the shark when not only do we have 300 stories about the same (political) topic on the front page, we have a top rated comment following Godwin's law.

Can I get an email or something when this site decides it wants to return to technology and not be r/Politics?

drhayes94• 13 years ago

I can't think of any single topic more important to the health of the Internet as we know it then this, right now. Sorry to be harsh, but dismissing these discussions as merely "politics" is short-sighted and naive.

MrMan• 13 years ago

this kind of thing could destroy the bubble you live in, so you should pay attention.

tlogan• 13 years ago

The reason why this is very important for Hacker News (and my business) is that me and my business depends on "internet" and "cloud". If people starts loosing confidence (i.e., that their data in cloud is mined to find "things"), we will be losing customers, people will be more and more hesitant to use "cloud" and "internet" (especially ones outside US), etc.

mindcrime• 13 years ago

I wish people would stop carrying on about "Godwin's Law". It's completely meaningless and references to it are no more than just another Internet meme.

DennisP2• 13 years ago

"Ingram’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of an improper invocation of Godwin’s Law approaches 1.

"...it should be evident Ingram’s Law does not excuse irrelevant, improper mentions of Nazism in any discussion. It is not a purely rhetorical device. But it ought to be used to counter any attempt to side-step proper mention or comparison with Nazism and Hitler or avoid admitting the similarities between Nazism or Nazi practices"

http://richardvaningram.hubpages.com/hub/Godwins-Law-and-Ing...

Incidentally it turns out the Glenn Greenwald wrote a little commentary on Godwin's Law a few years back: http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

In the comments to that article, Godwin himself showed up, and wrote that his Law was intended only to discourage frivolous comparisons to Nazis, not substantive ones.

Tangaroa4• 13 years ago

Is the community jumping the shark, or is Hacker News under a denial-of-service attack? It's hard to tell.

Spooky232• 13 years ago

It's on point. Obama claimed a day ago that "nobody is listening to your calls". Give me a break -- that defines "the big lie".

Nobody said the US government is a bunch of Nazis. But the US government is following a public relations play book that is similar many ways... A deeply disturbing development.

PavlovsCat2• 13 years ago

You want the dog, but not the poop it is making, huh?

"The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." -- George Orwell

I'd argue something similar goes for HN. Especially since "Politics" basically means how people live together in cities, and here a lot of the architects of our virtual city hang out. Yes, surveillance and effectively autocracy is older than technology, but with how the marriage is going lately, it's very much our concern. It's not like any of this would be possible without engineers and mathematicians who made it so.

flyinRyan3• 13 years ago

What jumped the shark is constantly citing Godwin's law. What good is history if we can't learn from it or cite it?

lawnchair_larry• 13 years ago

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

wfunction• 13 years ago

in the United States only Congress can declare wars

Declaring wars is so old school though. Now we just send drones wherever we want.

BCM43• 13 years ago

Also, keep in mind, in 1932 Germany was a democracy.

stox• 13 years ago

And when was the last time Congress actually declared war? Not in my lifetime.

IAmAI343• 13 years ago

The only real way I see of swinging the power back to the people is to use encryption in all our personal communications, that includes e-mail, voice, video. Unfortunately there is a very real possibility that the government has access to the CA keys so that it would render any encryption useless.

However, it seems that a new type of quantum key distribution system [1] may allow us citizens to share the keys such that not even the government may be able to get them. I don't really know much about this but it does seem promising. It may be the only way to ensure that only those that we choose can see our data. I would not be surprised though if the government tried to pass laws to make such technology illegal. Just like it tried to make military grade encryption illegal by claiming it was a munitions weapon.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

bmelton2• 13 years ago

Well, so long as we aren't planning on SSL/TLS to keep us safe[1].

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/03/13/cryptog...

sk5t• 13 years ago

A hostile entity owning the public CAs doesn't render "any" encryption useless--just PKI that trusts those common CAs. We could revert to the PGP signing parties of the 90s, or a variety of other key exchange protocols... just no more relying on a certificate because Thawte, Verisign, or (ha!) Comodo say it's good.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

Some people who run corporate intranets have long used self-signed certs for this reason. You don't need quantum cryptography to do this.

pdubs2• 13 years ago

It's not as malicious as Ron makes it out to be.

Here's Groklaw's bit on it: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130610101148583

The opinion Movant seeks cannot be released by the Government not only because it is classified but also because it is under this Court’s seal. As Judge Bates has explained, “[t]he FISC is a unique court,” whereas “[o]ther courts operate primarily in public, with secrecy the exception; the FISC operates primarily in secret, with public access the exception.” In re Release, 526 F. Supp. 2d at 487-88. The FISC maintains this operational secrecy because, unlike any other court, its “entire docket relates to the collection of foreign intelligence by the federal government.” Id. at 487.

It's secret simply by the nature of the court, not by specific executive instruction.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

The court is not secret, nor are its decisions intended to be permanently secret.

The idea behind seeking temporarily secret court-orders was that they would effect ongoing investigations, but that the court-orders would become public when the charges were brought.

An example is obtaining a wire-tap order for an individual. If it were automatically public, the individual might be watching the public record and see that they were being wire-tapped and make the wire-tap meaningless.

Now we have a situation where the decisions remain in secret for perpetuity? It's simple bullshit and an attempt to "route around" the Constitutional protections.

nikcub• 13 years ago

The broader metadata requests had a declassification date of 2038 - they must have argued that it isn't tied to any one case, and that it could always threaten an ongoing case if made public.

It is interesting that yet again we end up in a preposterous situation, where you can suck in all call data and not tell anyone, due to a long chain of small concessions (patriot act, fisa review, 'business records' condition, etc.)

rafcavallaro• 13 years ago

How misleading of you! Why quote the DOJ's obviously biased opinion? Better to quote the simple fact pointed out on that very same groklaw page that the secret court did in fact make a ruling that some surveillance was a violation of the Fourth Ammendment and/or violated the spirit of the law:

"EFF asked the government for a copy of "any written opinion or order" of the FISA court in which the court held that the surveillance conducted under the FISA Amendments Act (2008 version) "was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" or had "circumvented the spirit of the law." After some of the usual back and forth in discovery, the government revealed that it had found one such [!], but it refused to provide it on the grounds that it had no authority under FISC rules "to release FISC opinions to a FOIA requester or any other member of the public without a FISC order." So that's why EFF is now approaching the court itself, asking for a ruling that the government is allowed to provide it. The ACLU asked, and was denied, once before for the same relief it now is asking for, but now, after the latest events and the President's encouragement of public debate saying it's healthy for a democracy, it is renewing its request."

pdubs2• 13 years ago

That's legally useless without the details though.

ck22• 13 years ago

The saddest part is not a single candidate from either major party is going to reject this a couple years from now.

They might even take it a step further with drones.

you have to know everything in order to be completely safe

    - Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, East Germany

jacoblyles3• 13 years ago

The Pauls, and other reps supported by Campaign for Liberty (Justin Amash).

cantankerous• 13 years ago

And most hard line, true progressives. I think many folks have a hard time stomaching the Pauls and their cohorts on a variety of other issues. Unfortunate for the Pauls (and Amash), but true.

That said this is a good opportunity for both ends of the spectrum to work together.

ttrreeww• 13 years ago

Does anyone care about the constitution anymore?

godgod3• 13 years ago

Obama does. He uses it as toilet paper.

beefman• 13 years ago

This looks like blogspam to me

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...

lisper2• 13 years ago

FWIW, I didn't submit this item.

at-fates-hands• 13 years ago

Obama speech from August 1, 2007:

http://www.cfr.org/us-election-2008/obamas-speech-woodrow-wi...

"This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.

That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution

works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.

This Administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short-cuts to protecting America, and that is why the fifth part of my strategy is doing the hard and patient work to secure a more resilient homeland."

I'm still wondering when this idea of defending the people against this type of thing went out the window. . .

godgod3• 13 years ago

Thank you for posting this. I posted the exact same speech yesterday on another thread. The reason why this statement by Obama doesn't jive is because he's not working for you and me. He's working for people who put him in power. You, me, your mom, your dad, we're all being lied to by our government. I'm mad as hell...and I'm not going to take it anymore!

shpxnvz• 13 years ago

I'm still wondering when this idea of defending the people against this type of thing went out the window...

The moment it achieved it's intended political goal, I suspect.

drawkbox• 13 years ago

If there was a reason to impeach a president this might be it.

Nixon was impeached for spying on a few competitors but eerily similarly using the FBI, CIA and IRS to spy on competitors and was statesman enough to resign.

Bill Clinton for being too good and making people pry into his personal life.

So far this trumps both combined.

Granted this is the first time technology has allowed this amount of spying and illegal search and seizure of papers so timing would put any president there.

I am scared at what will happen 2-3 presidents from now if the executive branch overreach continues, the exact thing Obama was complaining about in 2008. Considering he was not for it before he became president.

godgod3• 13 years ago

This is a criminal government!

pattisapu2• 13 years ago

Nothing in the filing cited here even implies that any court found anything unconstitutional whatsoever.

This seems to be an instance of the old "telephone game" of blogs citing other blogs, in an admittedly emotional issue, although as far as I can tell the actual court activity here involves the rather technical issue of unsealing court records, not the merits of any constitutional matters.

jacoblyles3• 13 years ago

If the Supreme Court makes a ruling and nobody follows it, does it really have any power?

If the legislature makes 10% as many rules as the executive, who really legislates?

If branches of the executive insist on their "independence" from elected officials, is the US really a Democratic Republic?

What kind of country do we live in, really?

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-05-24/opinions/39495...

ck22• 13 years ago

Joe Biden (2006) I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I'm able to determine every single person you talked to; I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive.

Video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5863823

Tangaroa4• 13 years ago

I submitted a better link yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5859658

It is "better", in that:

1. It goes to the original source, not a blog post giving a five-line summary of another blog post.

2. It is relevant to the acts of which the NSA was recently accused (specifically, the collection of Verizon metadata) and not about some other vague undefined activity that the NSA has already been forced to stop doing.

3. It discusses in detail the Constitutional issues involved and the history of related court rulings.

4. It is the actual US Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

joering2• 13 years ago

I am having very hard time seeing the difference between going door to door just to find something, or going from computer to computer / account to account, just in case, to find something. Sure, the meaning of transportation changes, but just because you have a way to do something, it doesnt mean you should do it.

Whether its door to door unreasonable search (hello first amendment), or account to account unreasonable search, its still the same thing! And no court in their sound mind should find it different.

switch33• 13 years ago

Ha ha, precedence. Now the other court rulings should rule with similar rulings! :D

Spooky232• 13 years ago

What I find scary is that if the government can keep the secret rulings of the secret court secret at will, what is the point of bypassing even the nominal oversight that the secret court provides?

Court found NSA surveillance unconstitutional in 2011

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