N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/us/nsa-phone-surveillance-is-lawful-federal-judge-rules.html

by philfreo • 13 years ago

132 164 13 years ago

"Judge Pauley said that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies."

Kafka would be proud.

CrunchyJams• 13 years ago

This same justification was used for obtaining personal financial information from bank accounts (see US v. Miller, 1976).

My problem with this line of logic is that it can be applied to anything not owned directly by the person under surveillance. For example, let's say you rent an apartment. Can the government force the landlord to install mics and cameras without telling you? It's not your property, so do all of your fourth amendment protections disappear?

pavpanchekha4• 13 years ago

Yes, they can, were it not for other laws explicitly barring them from doing so.

joering2• 13 years ago

Indeed. Its okay to search your wallet since its not your "paper", like Constitution says. Its okay to search "your" house, since bank owns it, or landlord. Its okay to track your car with no warrant because well its using public roads. Too "bad" Monsato did not win a claim to patent our DNA; in that case you could be stripped down to naked and shoved with a huge anal probe and feds won't have a problem finding judge who would rule no Fourth Amendment was violated.

God Lord -- what is happening to this country???

tedivm• 13 years ago

"Judge Pauley said that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies."

The thing I don't get is why the NSA is considered a third party here. It's not the phone companies keeping the records, it's the NSA, so I honestly do not understand this ruling.

jaekwon3• 13 years ago

Sounds like the judge is saying that what third parties can have, the NSA can have.

chris_mahan16• 13 years ago

Sounds like the judge is putting the cloud-storage business to death.

halviti3• 13 years ago

This is the most important distinction here.

According to this, tax returns and medical records are no longer private, since you don't control them.

caseysoftware• 13 years ago

This.

I assume all of those records were already being obtained but here is the legal cover they need to do it officially.

The only records that are safe are those encrypted and on your person. Just don't write down the key. Information in your head is still (mostly) protected.

pavpanchekha4• 13 years ago

Yes, and they are not, which is precisely why we have separate laws that explicitly assure us of the privacy of these documents.

As for sibling comments that exclaim that this doctrine contradicts the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, consider that very intelligent people (Supreme Court Justices) who are explicitly trained in interpreting laws and especially the Constitution, and who are selected partly for this precise talent, have thought otherwise. In light of this circumstance, it may at least be reasonable that it is you who are not properly interpreting the meaning of the fourth Amendment.

daenz2• 13 years ago

I think he's saying the phone company is the 3rd party, and so searching and seizing from them is fine, because they're not searching you directly?

I guess a physical analogy would be if you held your belongings in a 3rd party storage unit, the judge is saying the cops should be allowed to search and take whatever they want, because they're doing it to you through a 3rd party.

thenerdfiles15• 13 years ago

I don't get it... The Fourth Amendment Text reads:

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, 
    papers, [and effects], against unreasonable searches and 
    seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, 
    but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, 
    and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the 
    persons or things to be seized.

And effects. They're washing this term of all its meaning.

That's like arguing that cops can search your apartment if it's being rented.

summerdown23• 13 years ago

So, if I give some papers to a lawyer to hold in his safe for me, I'm actually less secure than if I held them myself?

dalke5• 13 years ago

I don't think you understand what "3rd party" means.

The storage unit is a 2nd party. You (the first party) have a contract with the storage unit (the second party) to store your things. There is no third party.

Compare that to the phone company, where you (the first party) talk with someone else (the second party) using the phone company (the third party) equipment.

ehm_may• 13 years ago

I feel like this is a huge decision.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this essentially ruling that everything that you own and store in the 'cloud' doesn't belong to you in the sense that it is not subject to the same protections as other property you own?

I can see this having huge negative consequences for all US 'cloud' business.

thenerdfiles15• 13 years ago

Even further: We don't possess the copyright to the algoritms of non-plaintext. So effectively we don't own anything we codify in a proprietary format...

codex5• 13 years ago

Not really: the stipulations in the agreement you make with the cloud provider explicitly cover data rights. Rights to subpoena data is completely different.

berberous6• 13 years ago

You are right about the implications, but this is old news. This is what is known as the "third-party doctrine" and it goes back decades. It is not an entirely unreasonable doctrine, based on the history and text of the 4th amendment. More importantly, Judge Pauley is obligated to follow Supreme Court precedent on this issue. Our system of law is based heavily on "stare decisis", or the idea that we should follow precedent and not keep re-interpreting the law or changing the settled expectations of society.

That said, at least some members of the Supreme Court have expressed concern about how much the 3rd party doctrine guts our privacy rights in the modern age. In a recent case (Jones), the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS receiver to a car violated the defendant's rights because there was a warrantless intrusion when the device was physically placed on his car. For now, they side-stepped the issue of what would happen if, for example, the police collected all of your movements from a 3rd party like OnStar, which uses your car's built-in GPS. Judge Sotomayer, in a concurring opinion, discussed how the 3rd party doctrine may have to be changed:

"More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. E.g., Smith, 442 U. S., at 742; United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 443 (1976). This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. Perhaps, as JUSTICE ALITO notes, some people may find the “tradeoff” of privacy for convenience “worthwhile,” or come to accept this “diminution of privacy” as “inevitable,” post, at 10, and perhaps not. I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection. See Smith, 442 U. S., at 749 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (“Privacy is not a discrete commodity, possessed absolutely or not at all. Those who disclose certain facts to a bank or phone company for a limited business purpose need not assume that this information will be released to other persons for other purposes”); see also Katz, 389 U. S., at 351–352 (“[W]hat [a person] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected”). Resolution of these difficult questions in this case is unnecessary, however, because the Government’s physical intrusion on Jones’ Jeep supplies a narrower basis for decision. I therefore join the majority’s opinion."

mrobot3• 13 years ago

This ruling is incorrect. Protections under the fourth amendment must apply. Companies must be able to guarantee your data is safe, or you end up with thermostats and laptops in your home that can watch you without your ever knowing. You must know when you are being searched.

Of course 3-hop data imports FROM the phone company databases into NSA databases will still also exist, and have not been limited.

Private storage has been acting as an abused workaround for constitutional law this entire time. That is actually the exact problem with these programs. The "corporate store" is a fake third party, the third party being designed specifically to store the data once pulled from real third parties.

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

Lawful ≠ Constitutional.

The patriot act made all these "legal" - but aren't we waiting for a supreme court decision that states that the entire collection is "unconstitutional"?

noarchy6• 13 years ago

And when that court decides that it is all perfectly constitutional? That is the outcome that I expect, at this point. I think it is better to rely on ourselves to protect our privacy, where possible.

jrochkind12• 13 years ago

What are you talking about? The constitution is the "highest law of the land".

Have you read the opinion, or even the nytimes article posted here?

Judge Pauley said that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies.

This judge indeed decided it was constitutional, that is in fact what "lawful" means in this case. A different federal judge in a different district decided it was not. Eventually the Supreme Court will probably decide, especially becaues of the disagreement between two different federal districts, the Supreme Court can make the final determination. (This was in the nytimes article too). But federal district court judges can and do make decisions of constitutional law all the time, it's not only the supreme court that can do that, but the supreme court can overrule the lower courts.

Saying "Lawful ≠ Constitutional" just reveals you don't understand how the US legal system works. And also didn't bother to read the article before commenting on it. You are incorrect.

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

Look over the checks & balances in this case[1]. He was ruling that the collection was legal under the patriot act. However, the supreme court has the ability to apply "judicial review" to overturn a law / act / action.

A quick perusal of wikipedia should help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checks_and_balances#Checks_and_...

dragonwriter3• 13 years ago

Lawful ≠ Constitutional.

¬Constitutional ⇒ ¬Lawful

The Constitution is the highest law, and that which is not Constitutional is, ipso facto, not lawful.

The patriot act made all these "legal" - but aren't we waiting for a supreme court decision that states that the entire collection is "unconstitutional"?

The Supreme Court doesn't have unique competency in Constitutional cases, it just has final appellate authority. Every decision by a federal court that something is legal includes, either implicitly or explicitly, a decision that it is Constitutional.

In this case, the Constitutional judgement is explicit, not implicit.

pvnick• 13 years ago

What does a broken record sound like? Read the first line of the ruling: http://i.imgur.com/y8LZQUM.png

sanderjd3• 13 years ago

Ugh no kidding. 9/11 happened on my 16th birthday. I can't believe I'm almost 30 and it is still used to justify so much of our policy.

rtpg3• 13 years ago

I don't get how referencing a singular event often is actually an issue.

the Great Depression showed us how important it is to have an insurance on personal bank accounts, to disincentive bank runs. While one might counter that there have been other economic crises and bank runs, there have also been many other terrorist attacks aimed at US interests and allies. We still cite the great depression all the time because it was kind of a big deal.

I don't want to comment on how its being used in this policy decision but acting like 9/11 isn't somehow a big deal is strange.

talmand3• 13 years ago

One day you'll join the rest of us and stop doing math like that.

Anyway, I still can't believe we're trade partners with Japan. I mean, after all, Pearl Harbor?

chrismcb2• 13 years ago

My problem with the 9/11 anecdote, is the Judge believes 9/11 could have been prevented if we had known someone's phone number. Although he didn't provide any evidence to suggest that knowing his phone number would have helped, or that we knew he would be involved. What is also interesting is, the claim that because we didn't know his phone number, we assumed he was overseas. I fail to see how knowing that he was in San Diego would have made a difference. Or why they automatically assumed he was overseas. Or even why he was a suspect, and if he WAS a suspect, why do nothing other than throw their hands up in the air and say "well he is overseas, oh well"

x00542• 13 years ago

A quote from Benjamin Franklin comes to mind: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

codex5• 13 years ago

In what way have my liberties been reduced? On the ground, nothing has changed. Now five organizations have my metadata instead of four.

jkn• 13 years ago

Thanks for including the important "essential" and "little temporary" qualifiers that are so often left out.

Even so I don't like this quote. The notion that some people don't deserve safety because of their poor valuation of liberty, is so obviously wrong...

ballard4• 13 years ago

Their price of admission is eternal resistance limited to defense.

codex5• 13 years ago

He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it.

Crito• 13 years ago

Some history cannot be repeated. That particular action failed to be repeated the fourth time it was attempted on 9/11/2001. The only people who need to do any "remembering" are passengers and pilots of airplanes.

PavlovsCat• 13 years ago

History is full of tyranny using alleged external threats as an excuse for power and money grabs. So, yeah.

thenerdfiles15• 13 years ago

"Judge Pauley said that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies."

Okay, so then when I download an MP3 it's not theft because I didn't actually deprive the artist of their source files.

thenerdfiles15• 13 years ago

They're totally exploiting the fact that the legal system is so huge, no one organization can keep track of all of these conceptual inconsistencies.

Where's http://groklaw.net when you need it?

chris_mahan16• 13 years ago

Sadly, groklaw.net apparently went down exactly because it was unable to insure the privacy of its communications once it discovered the extant of the NSA data collection.

So if we are unable to communicate privately, is there any privacy left?

halviti3• 13 years ago

I disagree. This is so far over the line into obvious bullshit that anyone with a 6th grade education can smell the government's Schadenfreude.

If anything they are exploiting the fact that the public has become docile and likely won't fight back, even when they know without a doubt they are being lied to by the people they pay to protect them.

jaekwon3• 13 years ago

Yeah haha! Let's at least make the system consistent.

To be fair, then I'd also have to let the NSA keep records from "third parties", since I'm a Kopimist of sorts.

Actually, I'm OK with the NSA having my data. I'm not OK with them compelling third parties to HAND OVER data (e.g. PRISM) but I'm fine with them holding information that they gathered through other means as long as those means were acceptable. Tapping fiber optic cables is a gray line here.

All good as long as they allow me to evade them by taking privacy into my own hands. I want to be able to use, export, and import any encryption technology that I see fit.

Let's play ball.

noarchy6• 13 years ago

Those of you who want a political answer to this surveillance problem should pay attention when these things happen. This is your system, in a nutshell. The legislators, judges, law enforcement officials, etc, are all in on this. Don't wait for the president or prime minister to change things. That won't happen. You'll have to take your security into your own hands to the greatest extent possible. This will including learning to adapt once your government inevitably outlaws your favourite means of protecting your security and privacy.

sanderjd3• 13 years ago

This actually looks more like the system working to me. There are now two important judges who disagree in their interpretation of the issue. The system failed when this was kept secret such that it could not be ruled on by the legal system (and I don't believe a "secret court" is a part of a "legal system"), but now that it is being ruled on, it's expected and proper that judges may disagree.

arca_vorago2• 13 years ago

Please keep in mind the very actions being described themselves have implications of undermining the entire judicial system, up to and including the SCOTUS. It's easy to say, "Well, yeah it was shitty they hid it from us, but now the courts will all take care of it as they do, and I'm sure SCOTUS won't rule wrongly, no no, they would never do that." but if you ignore the fact that there are allegations that judges are largely appointed based on the ability for the appointee to control via various methods including blackmail and bribery.

I'll let you follow the implications from there, but I'm afraid this situation is much more serious than you seem to realize.

chris_mahan16• 13 years ago

I've reached the conclusion that in order to receive constitutional protection of "my papers", they need to be "on paper". So, I essentially don't put anything on the internet, or even on my computer, unless I'm comfortable with it being on the internet, permanently (meaning until my great-grandchildren retire, in 120 years).

for reference, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

I would like to think that "papers" in the text would also refer to electronic documents, but alas that seems to not be the case.

This is one of those cases where the saying "In Theory, Practice and Theory are the same, but in practice they're not." seems to fit.

rayiner6• 13 years ago

You're setting up and knocking down a strawman. Its not a matter of electronic documents versus paper. A USB key in your desk drawer is protected as much as a stack of paper documents. This was not a controversial issue. Courts have treated electronic documents uniformly with paper ones for a long time with little fanfare.

The relevant issue is where these documents are located, and whether it's reasonable to have a privacy interest in documents transmitted in plain text over the internet. As an analogy: if you leave your physical papers in someone's garage, you cannot invoke the 4th amendment if the police find those documents otherwise lawfully. It's not reasonable for you to claim a privacy interest in documents over which someone else has unrestricted control.

That's the nature of an electronic document "in the cloud." Countless people have access to that document, at the service provider and also at intermediate routing nodes. If you use Google or Facebook, that information is even routinely scanned for advertising purposes. That's the nature of the internet. It's built on routing plain text information between unrelated nodes. Treating this information that is physically not private as "logically private" is a social fiction based on trusting service providers.

That's the question courts are faced with. Not whether electronic documents enjoy 4th amendment protection (they clearly do), but whether to indulge the fiction that documents which are as a factual matter not private should nonetheless be treated as private for 4th amendment purposes. There might be good reason to do that. There might also be good reason to stop short of fully endorsing the current status quo, and requiring service providers to make certain privacy guarantees in order for documents on their systems to enjoy 4th amendment protections.

codex5• 13 years ago

Does this mean I should buy a gun? You sound just like the NRA.

noarchy6• 13 years ago

You think encouraging the use of technologies that protect privacy is akin to NRA rhetoric? Or is it that I don't believe in relying on government to protect privacy? We'll have to agree to disagree.

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

You're not going to get a political solution without widespread political action. Talk about it, make it an issue that is just as important as anything else at the polls. Make other people understand the importance of the issue as well.

If gay marriage and pot legalization can become real, serious issues that the electorate cares passionately about then so can surveillance and the extension of essential liberty onto the internet.

noarchy6• 13 years ago

Gay marriage and pot legalization haven't done anything to diminish the power of the State. If anything, they've done the opposite, by introducing even more controls into certain areas of our lives. But leaving that aside, I think that governments find our privacy to be a much greater threat to their power than who they decide can get married, or what they decide people can smoke. I think that going after the surveillance state cuts much closer to the heart of their power.

Joeboy• 13 years ago

I think that's a false dichotomy. You're not going to get mainstream technical fixes, or keep them legal and secure, without engaging in a fair amount of politics. There are plenty of misfires and misguided efforts in both the political and technical spheres, but that doesn't mean either sphere should be dismissed in its entirety.

noarchy6• 13 years ago

If some people want to spend their time and energy on political pursuits, they're free to do so. I won't try to stop them, but I will be happy to both discourage them and to not join them in such pursuits. This isn't like trying to get the government to allow the plebes to smoke pot, or something similarly-unthreatening to their power. Though I am sure that governments would be happy to legalize your privacy, in exchange for broad regulations on how much they'd like to allow you to have at a given moment (meaning, none whatsoever when it really counts).

rtpg3• 13 years ago

Maybe you should try to be less myopic on these things when paying attention though. Historically both the judicial and the legislative system have slowly pushed back on unchecked executive privilege. Before FISA, the executive could basically spy on any foreigner for any reason without any reason given to the other branches. Congress pushed back, putting into place the Senate Intelligence committee.

The problem isn't that all branches are in on it, it's that they aren't. There isn't communication between the three branches, so when the gory details get revealed ,be it Hoover's FBI antics, Nixon's abuses, or now, the NSA's eagerness, other branches fight back.

If you look at laws regarding privacy historically, there's a general tendency for more, not less. One step back doesn't invalidate a whole system.

lukifer• 13 years ago

Past performance isn't necessarily predictive of future results. Big data is entirely unprecedented in world history.

noarchy6• 13 years ago

We're in a new era of surveillance, where Nixon's abuses look like schoolyard pranks compared to what governments are doing today. Even the excesses of Hoover's FBI can't touch what is being done now. Considering how little (read: next to nothing) was done about those past excesses, it won't shock me to see nothing at all done about those conducted in the present-day. We've seen legislatures, presidents, and courts all lining up on the same page, with more than enough rubber-stamping to go around. Creating oversight bodies means another set of rubber stamps.

bushido• 13 years ago

Links[0] to the article without a login; if you aren't subscribing to NY times, and/or don't intend to.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=N.S.A.Phone+surveillance+is+...

[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&u...

apayan• 13 years ago

"Technology allowed al Qaeda to operate decentralized and plot international terrorist attacks remotely," Pauley wrote. "The bulk telephony metadata collection program represents the government's counter-punch."

Following this line of reasoning, as technology advances, there is no limit to what data can be gathered in to stop "terrorism."

This ruling highlights the fact that there can be no political solution to ending the U.S. surveillance state as long as those in power believe this or at least find it profitable. The remedy has to be technological. Citizens need to be encrypting all their communications to make mass surveillance prohibitively expensive.

dcc1• 13 years ago

.... Then the federal government increases taxes on its subjects to spend on decryption of its subjects communications...

amalag• 13 years ago

Even federal judges need terrorists to justify their decisions?

yogsohedthren• 13 years ago

Do we, as the creators of this data, not retain IP rights over it? Are we unable to use the laws written by the other big cartel against the promiscuous use of it?

uptown• 13 years ago

If that's how the law works - guess it's time to abandon all cloud-based services. There's seemingly zero protection for anything hosted by a 3rd party.

thenerdfiles15• 13 years ago

Even further: it seems like we have to abandon all proprietary formats. What is a record is not something you technically own. Your idea or concept is codified in the record.

What's that saying?: Files are a myth.

aryastark2• 13 years ago

Who cares what is legal/illegal. That's missing the point. Under the PATRIOT Act raping and torturing infants is legal[1]. When corrupt politicians make corrupt laws, the only thing that should matter is what is morally correct. Or to quote John Oliver of the Daily Show,

I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to.

[1] probably.

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

I understand that you're angry and frustrated but don't make arguments like this. Do you think you're convincing anybody with these preposterous statements? Do you think someone who is unconvinced that the PATRIOT Act is bad would read what you are saying and be astonished at the idea that it makes raping and torturing infants legal, then be spurred to change their mind and take action to oppose it?

There's no need to make up bullshit about the PATRIOT Act, to exaggerate its effects, or to engage in histrionics. Those things weaken your case in the eyes of the people who you most want to convince. Don't exaggerate, don't use hyperbole, don't lie, don't be immature, make the strongest case possible and back it with facts.

summerdown23• 13 years ago

Astonishingly, I think you are incorrect. Apparently there are serious figures who think the torturing of infants is in fact legal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo#Regarding_torture_of_...

"If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?", to which Yoo replied "No treaty." Cassel followed up with "Also no law by Congress—that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo", to which Yoo replied "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."

aryastark2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the downvote. Didn't realize I was on reddit.

Don't exaggerate, don't use hyperbole, don't lie, don't be immature,

I did none of those things. I used a device called humor. Perhaps you have none. I'm sorry. I did quote the Daily Show, after all.

Thanks to you, InclinedPlane, I will never make another PATRIOT Act joke. Thank you for informing me on how to use my Freedom Speech.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

As there are more trial court decisions on the NSA programs, it appears that there will be a split in results of those decisions among various trial courts. Those decisions can be appealed to the federal circuit appellate courts, where there may again be a split among the decisions. A circuit split[1] on an important issue of federal law, especially constitutional law, is one of the most reliable ways to prompt consideration of an issue by the United States Supreme Court. That court will have the last word[2] on this issue.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split

[2] "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." A saying by Justice H. Jackson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson

jacobheller2• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, even if there were no circuit split (i.e., even if the courts of appeals in both cases agree), the Court does often take cases that are of great national importance. This would certainly qualify.

fragsworth• 13 years ago

This system is totally broken. The federal government receives funding to do things that the general public despises, in secret, and then, if caught, the courts decide the legality of it ex post facto.

The U.S. federal government makes far too many decisions that are no longer accountable to the public. This is an extremely dangerous situation to be in, and if we don't have some serious reform done then I believe we are in for a very shitty future.

delinka• 13 years ago

s/receives/takes from the general public the/

It's not like we have the option to starve this beast of its financial support.

jacobheller2• 13 years ago

For the lazy, here's the full text of the opinion on Casetext: https://casetext.com/case/aclu-v-clapper/

atmosx• 13 years ago

I am curious about what % of Americans consider this a real issue vs those who just don't care.

Of course HN is a tech community, understands the repercussions and it's very sensitive on the matter.

I am asking because we're possibly facing a huge (maybe the biggest) gap between voters and government here.

err4nt• 13 years ago

Reminds me of this quote from our favorite space saga:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz20lu2AM2k

redwood2• 13 years ago

Unreal. for some perspective, from: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/contactUs/faq.aspx

"4. Can Postal Inspectors open mail if they feel it may contain something illegal? First-Class letters and parcels are protected against search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and, as such, cannot be opened without a search warrant. If there is probable cause to believe the contents of a First-Class letter or parcel violate federal law, Postal Inspectors can obtain a search warrant to open the mailpiece. Other classes of mail do not contain private correspondence, and therefore may be opened without a warrant."

So the phone companies are a third party. The postal service is not.

talmand3• 13 years ago

Is a warrant required to read the addresses on the outside of the envelope on First Class mail?

thenerdfiles15• 13 years ago

The difference here is: "Can the Postal System provision X-ray systems to scan all mail and hold a database of its scans up to 18 months to prevent unlawful activity?"

berberous6• 13 years ago

FYI, they photograph the outside of every envelope (to/from addresses).

irishmoss• 13 years ago

I can't imagine how the Justice Sotomayor could have been any more clear in this issue:

  I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed
  to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, 
  for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection. 
  [citations omitted] 
  Resolution of these difficult questions in this case is unnecessary, 
  however, because the Government's physical intrusion on Jones' Jeep 
  supplies a narrower basis for decision.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf

When Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan feel surveillance is so obviously unconstitutional as to provide an even narrower basis than actual trespassing, and Sotomayor writes a separate opinion for the sole purpose of conveying she'd be the 4th vote, I find it hard to imagine how any judge could uphold this surveillance in good faith.

nilved• 13 years ago

Why does anybody care what the judge thinks? Use Tor and crypto and tell them to fuck themselves.

coldcode• 13 years ago

Hopefully SCOTUS will say something else, but I'm not holding my breath. Eventually the content of the phone calls will also be found to be not private as we are using a 3rd party to communicate, so in the end all electronic communication will thus be available for recording and interpretation legally by the government. What kind of world that will be is unknown, but it won't be one anyone wants to live in.

ballard4• 13 years ago

Sure, Your Honor, and what about JSOC assassinating American citizens. Why even bother with warrants or legal process the rest of the time? Throw it all away. Just let the executive branch do whatever the fuck they like (contrary to the intention of separations of powers) with their own mercenary army that's beyond the law. The only problem then is why should anyone respect the law if said executive branch doesn't?

Kinnard• 13 years ago

Done.

N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules

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