News How far should the Dragnet reach.

[nsaspook]

Is the NSA spying on Germany's PM relevant to this thread? I'm wondering if anyone cares?

My perception is that the entire issue is just bluster. It is an issue only because it went public. Because it is public, the German government has to pretend to be outraged while Obama has to pretend to be sorry, all the while, everyone is spying on everyone because that's what spy agencies do.

I could care less if we spied on the German government as that's what the NSA was chartered to do and that's not why I posted that link (it's not about Germany's PM). I do care if we are using it (foreign surveillance) as a pretext for domestic surveillance of US citizens and activities on a massive scale by the US military and their contractors. The temptation to use this vast treasure of information on US citizens activities for ones own personal/political benefit will be almost impossible to prevent without legal controls that don't exist within the NSA/Military structure.
As many have pointed out the NSA uses it's overseas brothers (GCHQ in this case) to send it information on US citizens it can't legally obtain on US soil. These operations are not controlled by the FISA court as they are in the Military Intelligence domain controlled mainly by Executive Orders with almost no direct Congressional oversight. It's been this way forever and was tolerated as a legal necessity for the need of national security but we are at the point of complete national data surveillance that has moved far beyond security into the realm of the destruction of privacy in ordinary activities with warrantless searches of this data and now the government want's to be able to use this extra-legal information in court.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/court-nsa-warrantless-search-american-records
http://www.wcvb.com/news/national/U-S-to-use-NSA-surveillance-in-terror-case/-/9848944/22649812/-/iwk3iq/-/index.html

 

[nsaspook]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/edward-snowden-ruling-nsa-surveillance

Judge Richard Leon declared that the mass collection of so-called metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, relating to unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope.

He also expressed doubt about the central rationale for the program cited by the NSA: that it is necessary for preventing terrorist attacks. “The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack,” wrote Leon, a US district judge in the District of Columbia.

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/pa...s-nsa-program-is-likely-unconstitutional/668/

 

[klimatos]

As a former member of the intelligence community, I believe that the real reason governments collect this type of information is simple: Knowledge is Power. Any information that can be collected will be collected. If challenged, government agencies will lie, and government leaders will back them up. Get used to it, because it is only going to get worse as technology progresses.

How this power will be used, of course, is up the the moral and ethical sensibilities of our elected and appointed leaders. (Doesn't this give you a warm and fuzzy feeling!)

When I was a field agent in the Middle East, I assumed that every hotel room and government office was bugged, that every mirror had a camera behind it, that every local female was a possible "honey trap", and that every foreign contact reported directly to their own counter-intelligence agency. This is called "constructive paranoia", and is a very useful attitude to have.

Now that I am home, I am slightly less suspicious and paranoid--but only slightly. I don't belong to an social media groups and I wouldn't dream of broadcasting details of my personal life for all the world to hear--and record. Anyone who does so has only theirselves to blame if it comes back to haunt them sometime in the future--and you can be reasonably sure that it will!

 

[tfr000]

My "Rocket Propellant Handbook" took three weeks to arrive, and when it did it too was repackaged and postmarked someplace in Ohio instead of Oregon.

I guess I'm on the list as well...

Speaking of rockets... NASA used to have this really cool archive called the NASA Technical Reports Server. You could look up anything they (or their predecessors) published in the last 80-90 years. I used to use it to peruse old data on the Apollo flights, and early rocket technology. Now all of that is some kind of state secret - you can't find it on there anymore.
I don't know - I must admit, I'm a little creeped out by all of this. Secret courts authorizing secret spying. When do the secret trials and secret sentences start?

Dig this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-logo-boast-Nothing-Is-Beyond-Our-Reach.html

 

[nsaspook]

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the recommendation to end NSA’s bulk collection “goes to the very heart of NSA dragnet surveillance.” He called it “the most necessary recommendation of the review group.”

Bulk collection is the least likely thing to be eliminated unless there is a iron-clan legal ruling against it. Vast amounts of time and money have been dedicated to present and future system specifically for this analytical method and I just don't see them moving back to Pre 9/11 authority without a massive fight using every bit of dirt they have on Washington's politicians to maintain the status quo.

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/19...llow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll
The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies report.

From the report:

In the American tradition, the word “security” has had multiple meanings. In contemporary parlance, it often refers to national security or homeland security. One of the government’s most fundamental responsibilities is to protect this form of security, broadly understood. At the same time, the idea of security refers to a quite different and equally fundamental value, captured in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . ” (emphasis added). Both forms of security must be protected.

 

[tfr000]

Bulk collection is the least likely thing to be eliminated unless there is a iron-clan legal ruling against it.

nsaspook: I'm inclined to agree. In fact, the genie is out of the bottle. I don't see it going back in, ever. Who is going to supervise a secret agency?

 

[nsaspook]

nsaspook: I'm inclined to agree. In fact, the genie is out of the bottle. I don't see it going back in, ever. Who is going to supervise a secret agency?

The 'secret' agents in the agency will if a culture of lawful behavior is enforced by criminal legal sanctions (prison instead of lost jobs or contracts) for side-stepping the law for any reason. In the past very few actually knew the details (sources and methods) of systems and operations so it was easy to cover-up as the actions of a few 'rogue' agents, today that's really impossible as the scope of that's needed for domestic spying is so big and the level of access has been widened to the point it can't be hidden anymore and ignored when discovered as the mindless talk of tin-foil nuts. The agencies know this and surely have made plans to cope with it. It's one reason IMO Snowden won't be seen as a 'hero' to freedom from universal surveillance unless there is a fundamental change in the objectives of domestic spying (unlikely) and the whole episode won't be gamed by NSA and others to make overtly lawful for US citizens that's been used under it's charter covertly for foreign powers for decades.

 

[klimatos]

Secret courts authorizing secret spying. When do the secret trials and secret sentences start?

What makes you think they haven't?

 

[tfr000]

What makes you think they haven't?

Well, so far there are no widespread instances of people disappearing, for one thing.

 

[klimatos]

Well, so far there are no widespread instances of people disappearing, for one thing.

It's unlikely to be "widespread", just an uncooperative individual here and there. Police officers will tell you that people disappear by the thousands every day. They go out for "a pack of cigarettes" and are never heard from again. IMO secret tribunals are far more likely than abduction by UFO's.

 

[nsaspook]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/u...from-ruling-on-surveillance-efforts.html?_r=0


More of the status quo.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved late Friday to prevent a federal judge in California from ruling on the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs authorized during the Bush administration, telling a court that recent disclosures about National Security Agency spying were not enough to undermine its claim that litigating the case would jeopardize state secrets.
...
So, he said, he was continuing to assert the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to seek to block information from being used in court even if that means the case must be dismissed. The Justice Department wants the judge to dismiss the matter without ruling on whether the programs violated the First or Fourth Amendment.

 

[Evo]

This thread has gotten out of hand with conspiracies and unsubstantiated personal opinions.

 

[Astronuc]

According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from the smartphone identification codes of users to where they have been that day.

The N.S.A. and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were working together on how to collect and store data from dozens of smartphone apps by 2007, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. Since then, the agencies have traded recipes for grabbing location and planning data when a target uses Google Maps, and for vacuuming up address books, buddy lists, telephone logs and the geographic data embedded in photographs when someone sends a post to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other Internet services.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/spy-agencies-scour-phone-apps-for-personal-data.html

Hmmm. Perhaps smart phones (or apps) are a bit too smart. One certainly has the choice of not using such technology.