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NSA spying exposed by Snowden was illegal and not very useful, court says:
The National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone metadata from telecom providers was illegal, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The court also found that the phone-metadata collection exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was not necessary for the arrests of terror suspects in a case that the US government cited in defending the necessity of the surveillance program.
The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the 2013 convictions of "four members of the Somali diaspora for sending, or conspiring to send, $10,900 to Somalia to support a foreign terrorist organization." But the Somalis' challenge of the NSA spying program yielded some significant findings. In part, the ineffectiveness of the phone-metadata collection helped ensure that the convictions would be upheld because the illegally collected metadata evidence wasn't significant enough to taint evidence that was legally collected by the government. The government got what it needed from a wiretap of defendant Basaaly Saeed Moalin's phone, not from the mass collection of metadata.
The court's three-judge panel unanimously "held that the metadata collection exceeded the scope of Congress's authorization in 50 U.S.C. § 1861, which required the government to make a showing of relevance to a particular authorized investigation before collecting the records, and that the program therefore violated that section of FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]," the ruling said.
The judges also wrote that "the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans, including at least one of the defendants." But the judges didn't make a ruling on the potential Fourth Amendment violation because it wasn't necessary to decide the case. While "the Fourth Amendment requires notice to a criminal defendant" when prosecutors want to use evidence from surveillance at trial, the judges "did not decide whether the government failed to prove any required notice in this case because the lack of such notice did not prejudice the defendants," the ruling said.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2020, @10:46PM (22 children)
That's the real kicker, isn't it? I mean, if I were to decide to break the law, I would expect to gain something from it. I think most people expect to gain something from breaking the law. Whether that gain be 2 seconds from running a stop sign, or a few thousand dollars gained through theft, we want to get something that we deem useful.
Here, the intel communities and law enforcement are breaking the law, and not getting anything useful?
We should presume then, that they just enjoy breaking the law, to no purpose? Scofflaws deserve to spend some time in jail.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday September 03 2020, @11:21PM (5 children)
They were siphoning off all the data in the hope of fishing something good in it. And then they pretended they did to justify the siphoning, which the judge rightfully saw as clutching at straws.
But more importantly, I'm not sure why the usefulness of the collected data enters into the picture. The minute it's illegal, it's unacceptable - useful or not.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 03 2020, @11:56PM (4 children)
The question was whether it "poisoned" the conviction. If this illegally acquired information was needed for the conviction, then the conviction is poisoned as well and has to be overturned. But by being deemed "useless" the conviction was allowed to stand.
To use a car example, suppose the police put a tracker on my car without a warrant or probable cause, and hence, illegally. If later, they catch me smuggling Canadian maple syrup on the basis of that illegal tracker, then they can't convict me. But if their case doesn't rely on the illegal tracker (say because someone more competent built up a case using legally acquired evidence), then the conviction isn't threatened by the illegal activity.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday September 04 2020, @01:16AM
Well it is the NSA we're talking about. Almost none of the three letter agencies really care about due process anymore. Just throw in the terrorist word and the law doesn't apply anymore - at least, no law that respect the constitution.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @07:48AM (1 child)
Unless that other someone was parallelconstructing your case. And you won't really know if he was.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 05 2020, @12:45AM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @12:25PM
It probably wasn't particularly useful in this case as the money had to get out of the country and to those groups somehow. Given the amount of attention that money traveling through the banking system gets, I'd be surprised if they were really counting on phone details for the conviction.
More likely, they got the tip-off in some other way and this was just something they were using to strengthen their case and they were allowed to use it.
There's all this attention being paid to the police as if it's an isolated issue, but the reality is that as long as prosecutors and courts are going along with these blatantly unconstitutional methods of investigation and prosecution, what the cops do is going to be at most a minor concern. Not being shot by cops is typically pretty easy, to arrange, in virtually all cases the deceased was running or fighting with them. If you don't do either of those two things, the likelihood of being shot drops to damn near zero. If there's an actual issue, that's what the courts are for.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 03 2020, @11:33PM (4 children)
You might be doing a cost/benefit analysis, and decided if the risks of breaking the law make the benefits worthwhile, which is only necessary if there is a risk.
These laws were broken by the servants of your ruling class, so there is no real risk, as there will never be any consequences.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 04 2020, @01:22AM (3 children)
^^^
Because the ruling class is free from considerations about the usefulness of their actions, they can do as they please with not even an economic penalty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday September 04 2020, @02:27AM (2 children)
Economic penalty? You sound like some sort of marxist.
Just keep shoveling your tax money into those massively profitable corporations that might all fail because of Covid-19 like a good capitalist ok?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 04 2020, @03:13AM (1 child)
I keep remembering those kings of the past (the ruling class) who lost their life because they overspent (on crusades, or armies or palaces).
The modern ruling class can just print money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @03:32PM
Until someone is willing to 'call in' the debt from outside the system, there is no way for individuals inside the system to prove the coffers are dry. Thanks to all currency being replaced with not just fiat, but actually 'virtual' currency, it's easy to make up whatever numbers are needed, and thanks to the scale of it, there is no effective way for anyone other than another nation-state to prove they are out of money until the debt is called due, and resources to back that debt cannot be found, packaged and transferred.
So short of a massive purchase of natural resources massive quantities of labor, or another physical product, there is no way to show that the economy has already tipped past the point of making good on its debts.
(Score: 1) by fakefuck39 on Friday September 04 2020, @02:23AM (8 children)
It was plenty useful, just not on paper. You find a bunch of criminals, and use parallel construction to arrest them. You can't admit what you actually used in a court or it gets thrown out.
A long time ago, while living in France, I was shopping around ebay for some chemicals, some water aspirators, some flasks. Semi-random stuff purchased over a year. Then I ordered some aniseed oil. That's when ebay put small plastic ziplock bags in my suggested items. Not after all the lab equipment - after the essential oil that mlm soccer moms buy.
Ebay was right - after just being bored and making low-acidity coffee and improving the taste of cheap wine to entertain myself, washing my shoes in dichloromethane, and extracting fresh apple flavor for hookah tobacco, I got really really bored and made something that normally gets put in those small plastic baggies. Now if the cops had my ebay data, they could follow my car when I left my house Saturday night, pull me over for going 2km/h too fast, and I'd get busted for having pma in on me. Would ebay data get me arrested - yes. But on paper it would be going 2km/h over the speed limit.
And that's the case here. The data collection wasn't useless - it did exactly what they wanted it to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @12:34PM (7 children)
The big issue with this is that it's bullshit. I don't know about the laws over there, but in the US, they would need a lot more than you going slightly over the speed limit in order to do any investigation. Going a bit over the speed limit would allow them to pull the vehicle over and not much else. Unless you've got something more in the vehicle, they wouldn't be allowed to investigate beyond that and even then it would be pretty limited.
Parallel construction is a real problem, but they can't just investigate because they feel like it, if you haven't done something that would allow them to investigate, they can't investigate. They can look harder for a way, but in most of these cases, these are people who did something that allowed the parallel construction to work, it's not like they typically create it from scratch.
Obviously, it's an abuse of power that needs to stop, but it's a bit overblown in that they still need some path that would stand up in court as to how they got the evidence.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Friday September 04 2020, @04:45PM (6 children)
WTF are you literally talking about? In the US, the cops pulls you over for any reason they want, make you wait for a drug dog, and signal the drug dog to bark. Then they search your car. They can say they smelled weed. Do you, um, actually live here?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @08:49PM (5 children)
Around here, they don't bother with the dog unless they're bored. They just say "What's that smell? Step out of the vehicle"
(Score: 1) by fakefuck39 on Friday September 04 2020, @09:15PM (4 children)
Which is perfectly legal. You then fully comply and step out of the vehicle. If they then search your car without the dog or your permission, you're in luck - you can have a kilo of heroin and an illegal gun in your glove box, and none of it is admissible in court.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Saturday September 05 2020, @03:59AM (3 children)
When I lived in Ohio law enforcement needed probable cause to search your car.
They were allowed to ask your permission to search your car.
If you did not grant permission, that established probable cause.
(Score: 1) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 05 2020, @08:39AM (2 children)
I remember in Nashville in my party days. I was in my mid 20s, had a small consulting company and was making bank, and rented an apartment on the Vanderbilt campus for a year for a gig. Bought an old dying lexus from the client to get the gig, let's just say for much more than it was worth (nothing). Coked up and drunk, car full of guys and gals, coming home from a strip club with a stripper in the car, drinking in the car. We were waiting to turn left into the apartment complex, but at the last minute changed my mind to go straight to the gas station to get some cigs.
Cop pulls me over right away. This was like a 2-block 15mph drive at 3am, zero cars on the road. I give him my info, he asks me to step out. I roll up the windows, take my keys with me, and lock the car when I step out. He has me stand on one foot and count to 30 - I count nice and slow, no balance issues. I walk the walk, no issues. He does the pen eye-cross thing and claims they crossed - I say I took an aspirin an hour ago. He says I was 5mph speeding. I wasn't, since he pulled me over literally as I let off the brake. I ask his radar detector model number, the last date it was calibrated, and the last date he had training on that model detector.
He says "we all know you're drunk but you're free to go." I do get a speeding ticket. It got thrown out when I went to court instead of paying it.
The cop might say not granting permission established probable cause. I don't know OH law, but it clearly can't be that. So again, if they use that excuse to search the car, you're lucky - anything they find is inadmissible. The key is to say as little as possible, comply even with illegal requests, and keep in mind that the day you fight the guy is in front of a judge, who is not part of the executive branch of government. But who should go to the same golf course as your attorney.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Saturday September 05 2020, @09:15PM (1 child)
I confirmed it years ago with a Judge (then magistrate or DA, I for get) in the family. She said they aren't supposed to abuse it, but did not deny it. I guess it's like civil forfeiture in that way.
(Score: 1) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 05 2020, @11:39PM
And just like in Civil Forfeture, where you absolutely can get your money back following proper procedure, your mistake was talking to the judge. That's the equivalent of hiring your gardener to fix your computer. An attorney with thousands of hours of studying law is qualified for that - by siting the actual laws, as well as previous cases. You didn't do that - you just had a conversation with the judge. The judge is not on your side, or anyone else's side. You are supposed to present your case well to him, and he makes the decision based on your argument. You had no arguments - you had a conversation. If you talked to the DA, that's even worse - he is literally by law against you - it's not his job to get you off.
I don't agree with the way the current system works. Everyone should get free representation on their side, just like everyone gets a "free" DA to prosecute them. The real life of the matter is there are too many cases to do that, so the current system is the only way it can work with the resources available.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday September 04 2020, @02:23AM
Seems like they got scammed...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2020, @04:00AM
The real problem is that it's unconstitutional, not that it's not useful. If it were useful, that would be worse, because it would apparently legitimize the unconstitutional, democracy-destroying mass surveillance in many people's eyes.