US court rubber-stamps dragnet metadata surveillance (again) A US federal court has rubber stamped approval for the NSA to carry on with its controversial dragnet collection of Americans' phone records. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to green-light the NSA's mass surveillance of US phone call metadata until 1 June comes a year after President Barack Obama …
40 years in business. Looks like they've improved on all aspects of Soviet justice system and our Congress is fully complacent in helping them implement uncle Joseph's ideas. At this point the farce of American democracy is truly pathetic. Members of all branches of our great government keep bickering about trivial stuff while this gets voted in by a landslide (and how else when NSA has them all in check, I would not be surprised if a blackmail folder was ready for everyone).
I'm not sure who to call terrorists but seems like they have won.
"Remarkably effective for a government service."
Most government services and departments are effective. They only seem otherwise to us because we have somewhat naive notions about their purposes and functions.
The purpose of the FISC, for example, is to provide a veneer of legitimacy on which can by hung technically accurate statements, while acting as a nearly-automatic rubber stamp and at the same time obscuring as much as possible from any level of real oversight.
Most would argue they have been rather successful at this. Not hard when you have the protection of secrecy and of the office of the President* who will rush it to scream "National Security!!!" any time anyone want to have a look at what's happening.
* - Despite this one promising not to be so quick to use "National Security" as an excuse to hide details, he does it just as much - if not more - than Bush did.
But even then you would expect it to reject 20% for being on the wrong form, send back 30% for queries, lose 40% in the system and then launch an internal inquiry into what happened to the other 10%.
Remember it's only DMV grade incompetence that protects us from government
"If I remember correctly, they refused one authorization request in the nearly 40 years they have been in business." Trust Marketing to get the numbers wrong as usual. Even far-left rags like Mother Jones grudgingly admit at least eleven requests were outright denied (http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/fisa-court-nsa-spying-opinion-reject-request). And the reason they did not reject more is because the requests came with good legal qualification that met the warrant requirements. You seem to have glossed over the bit about the FISC being made up of qualified judges and using laws, not whimsy.
MB is quite right, they did indeed refuse a massive 11 cases....out of tens of thousands. Trust him to obscure the numbers in favour of his BS argument. Here's some facts:
"It is also rare for FISA warrant requests to be turned down by the court. During the 25 years from 1979 to 2004, 18,742 warrants were granted, while just four were rejected. Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being submitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few if any were before the year 2000. During the next eight years, from 2004 to 2012, there were over 15,100 additional warrants granted, with an additional seven being rejected. In all, over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court has granted 33,942 warrants, with only 11 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests" ~ (Wikipedia, FISC)
A rejection rate of a HUGE 0.03%. Woiw. That's clearly functional then.
Furthermore, whilst the FISC/FISA is indeed made up from qualified judges, the membership of FISC is at the very least questionable:
"In a July 2013 interview, Senator and privacy advocate Ron Wyden described the FISC warrant process as "the most one-sided legal process in the United States". "I don't know of any other legal system or court that really doesn't highlight anything except one point of view", he said. Later in the interview he said Congress should seek to "diversify some of the thinking on the court".[25]
Elizabeth Gotein, a co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, has criticized the court as being too compromised to be an impartial tribunal that oversees the work of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence activities. Since the court meets in secret, hears only the arguments of the government prior to deciding a case, and its rulings cannot be appealed or even reviewed by the public, she has argued that: "Like any other group that meets in secret behind closed doors with only one constituency appearing before them, they're subject to capture and bias."[26]
A related bias of the court results from what critics such as Julian Sanchez, a scholar at the Cato Institute, have described as the near certainty of the polarization or group think of the judges of the court. Since all of the judges are appointed by the same person (the Chief Justice of the United States), nearly all currently serving judges are of the same political party (the Republican Party), hear no opposing testimony and feel no pressure from colleagues or the public to moderate their rulings, group polarization is almost a certainty. "There's the real possibility that these judges become more extreme over time, even when they had only a mild bias to begin with", Sanchez said.[26]"
Yeah, ol' MB left out some inconvienient facts. As per usual.
One more thing about FISA/FISC before we get carried away: Over the course of its life, FISC has presided over only around 34,000 cases (over around 30 years - thats not many per year). *If* all surveillance requests are passed through FISC, regardless of their authority and form, we can hardly call that blanket surveillance of the entire population, can we?
Are all instances of surveillance considered and approved by FISC?
They (the secretive agencies whose names we are not allowed to whisper) are already several miles ahead in the race to circumvent the so-called FISA court (which was always nothing more than a PR stunt in the first place.)
I don't care what is revealed officially or through our wonderful whistle-blowers (KUDOs to you all!!!), the mammoth industry and its tentacles into governments will not go away. Maybe armeggedon (sp), maybe the 14th coming of X. No, lust for power and influence and money and black limousines is baked into their soles.
Proof, or GTFO, you fearmongering fuckpopsicle.
I always enjoy Trevor's posts, full of gentle understated humour and written in the most elegant and erudite language...
In full agreement with you, btw. Just wanted to make a silly comment...
Oh, and +1 for fuckpopsicle, definitely worthy of inclusion in my vocabulary
"If the fellow in question honestly believes the tripe he's peddling, do you really think his vocabulary or vocal comprehension are in an upper percentile?" Seriously, Potty, you're starting to make the Canadian educational system look non-existant. First you and the rest of the ovine crowd insist the spooks are "watching ALL OF US", building some despicable database on "EVERYONE", then the next moment you're also insisting the same system is inefficient! Either it's "despicable" but also working or it's no threat at all and you and the rest of the paranoid delusional herd can just give it a rest and get over yourselves.
Let's say that was true, and dropping this program means more people will die. So fucking what?!
If you think minimizing the number of deaths is the goal of society, why don't we have a 10 mph speed limit on all roads? There's no way terrorists will kill multiple tens of thousands of people a year like car accidents do in the US alone so how can you with a straight face recommend letting the NSA spy on innocent people in the name of saving lives while allowing other needless deaths to continue?
While you're at it, let's add some safety measures like mandating anti slip treatments in every bathtub, as well as ban dangerous activities like skydiving, skiing, boating, smoking and drinking alcohol. Women should probably also wear a lot more clothing, to prevent unnecessary deaths from skin cancer.
With such a major change in American society we might want to change our flag to symbolize this milestone. I'm thinking something that's mostly black...
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