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posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-care-what-you-want-we're-going-to-do-this dept.

A secret US tribunal ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency is free to continue its bulk telephone metadata surveillance program—the same spying that Congress voted to terminate weeks ago.

Congress disavowed the program NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed when passing the USA Freedom Act, which President Barack Obama signed June 2. The act, however, allowed for the program to be extended for six months to allow "for an orderly transition" to a less-invasive telephone metadata spying program.

For that to happen, the Obama administration needed the blessing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court). The government just revealed the order.

In setting aside an appellate court's ruling that the program was illegal, the FISA Court ruled that "Congress deliberately carved out a 180-day period following the date of enactment in which such collection was specially authorized. For this reason, the Court approves the application (PDF) in this case."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/secret-us-court-allows-resumption-of-bulk-phone-metadata-spying/


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  • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:54PM

    by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:54PM (#203943) Journal

    Providing that Congress doesn't pass something in the dead of the night on Christmas Eve to allow it indefinitely again.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:05PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 01 2015, @08:05PM (#203947) Journal

    Recall that they started this back in the bush administration, not because of language in the patriot act authorizing it, but because of legal memos interpreting that language somewhat broadly.

    There's not necessarily reason to believe that loopholes being reopened necessarily has to be an act of congress. They could just find some other parts of that or another law and use it as an excuse.

    In fact, broadly speaking, there's a lot of collection going on that isn't the now-killed "bulk metadata collection", such as the overseas data monitoring.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:25PM

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @11:25PM (#204017)

    They already did.

    Instead of the NSA violating the Constitution by collecting the data itself, for its own purposes, all it needs to is ask the corporations, that are now required to collect the data, to turn over the data when properly asked in the context of due process

    Now, of course all that is bullshit. One of the reasons Ma Bell was taken apart last century was precisely that they were slowing down the FBI with their departments full of compliance officers verifying court orders. Ma Bell didn't listen to the FBI when it complained that it needed faster and more ubiquitous access, so Congress took care of it.

    So where are we now?

    - AT&T, Verizon, etc. will collect and store the records.
    - FBI, NSA, $Shithead$ will send an electronic warrant to be evaluated by the telecom's server
    - Validation is of course instant since no such software can possibly exist to look over a warrant, and no humans can be involved as they are too slow
    - The warrants themselves will largely remain secret, since the flag saying it's a secret warrant will be abused terribly. The telecoms won't be able to talk, or dispute *anything* anymore.
    - Liability will be removed with a whole bunch of twisted legal weaselese that the executives demanded in their weekly blowjobs from Senators on their knees, which is also incidentally why nobody at the telecoms will care that could do anything about it.
    - Auditing will be a complete joke, and more red tape than a FOIA request to know if they're behaving like they're supposed to. We will just need to trust them, and their completely unblemished and pure record of high integrity.
    - The current director of the NSA will go golfing with the director of the FBI, and both will laugh and congratulate themselves on how they now have the telecoms working for them by law, with no resistance, and due process is nothing more than a concept on a piece of paper they wipe their asses with - The Constitution of the United States Of America
    - Near 90% of Americans wishes will be disregarded in one of the worst examples in US history where the government has wildly diverged from the will of the people. Not even Vietnam and the Hippies had as many people on the same page on how the government is shitty, corrupt, and disconnected from the people.
    - The NSA is exactly in the same place it was a year ago.... all of the meta data on their servers... and their code is mining it to find the "undesirable" Americans that need further surveillance, and possibly "re-education".

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    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:54AM

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:54AM (#204029)

      Instead of the NSA violating the Constitution by collecting the data itself, for its own purposes, all it needs to is ask the corporations, that are now required to collect the data, to turn over the data when properly asked in the context of due process

      A commonly repeated myth is that if the government asks corporations to do X (where X is some task that it itself wants done and would do if no restrictions were present), then suddenly it's constitutional; that's false. Corporations become a de facto agent of the government in those situations, so they're bound by the same rules. Otherwise, the constitution would be useless, which clearly wasn't the intent. And that last part is a joke. The FISA court rubberstamped a grand majority of data requests, so you can't think there will be actual due process involved.

      The "freedom" act is a joke; it fixes nothing, and perhaps makes things worse by giving the appearance that things were fixed.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:28AM

        by edIII (791) on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:28AM (#204036)

        Instead of the NSA violating the Constitution by collecting the data itself, for its own purposes, all it needs to is ask the corporations to do so, that are now required to collect the data, to turn over the data when properly asked in the context of due process

        Perhaps that is better :)

        Corporations become a de facto agent of the government in those situations, so they're bound by the same rules. Otherwise, the constitution would be useless, which clearly wasn't the intent

        That was one of the reasons why I will punch Obama in the face if I see him on the street (which is never of course). That cock monkey lied out his ass when he said he would take AT&T and telecom executives to task over this stuff. At the end of the day they submitted to unconstitutional demands from law enforcement, and *nobody* faced justice, or even stern words.

        Obama let happen exactly what you're saying shouldn't happen. We had a Presidential candidate promise to enforce the rules if he got elected, and instead, he made it even worse over the next 8 years. When you can't even get a Presidential candidate, who becomes elected, to enforce the Constitution and his campaign promises, you know you are fucked proper. They sat that moronic asshole down in the first week of his administration and he immediately towed the 'party' line like a little toady. Went from a President who was all talk, all moron, no substance... to pretty much the same :)

        It was at that point it was made abundantly clear to me that the rule of law was non-existent in telecoms and the intelligence agencies. It's them literally doing whatever the fuck they feel like, and damn all of our civil rights while they do it.

        Let's check the SCORECARD of the public will:

        1 - Beat down the Patriot Act with massive public outcry for it to be so, and a Senator performing filibusters talking about our Constitutional rights........ repealed almost immediately with hidden language and started right back up with a slightly different playing field, but the same game.
        2 - Obtained Net Neutrality at great effort......... FCC will now be defunded by appropriations bills that are being helped written by Comcast and industry.

        Yep. Representative Democracy. Text book Representative Democracy at work. Fine job our elected officials are doing with listening to the people.

        I feel so free.

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.