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Showing Original Post only (View all)NYTimes Op-Ed: "The Criminal N.S.A." [View all]
The Criminal N.S.A.By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN
Published: June 27, 2013
THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administrations claims that these modest encroachments on privacy were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to meh.
It didnt help that Congressional watchdogs with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky have accepted the White Houses claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.
This view is wrong and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.
~snip~
Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. The N.S.A.s demand for information about every Americans phone calls isnt targeted at all its a dragnet. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation? Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: Its not.
The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument any data might be relevant to an investigation eventually, if by eventually you mean sometime before the end of time. If all data is relevant, it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.
~snip ~
Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.
Much More Here> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=opinion
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a very good read imho.
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The nice thing about Op-Ed pieces is that the newspaper can't fire the writer(s)
99th_Monkey
Jun 2013
#2
THIS 'data collection' consists of monitoring who, when and how often I phone or email
99th_Monkey
Jun 2013
#5
Of course the "law is legal". The interpretation by the government may not be.
rhett o rick
Jun 2013
#21
Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance
PoliticAverse
Jun 2013
#26
The courts have not ruled on this brand new handy, dandy INTERPRETATION of the law.
Th1onein
Jun 2013
#53
"Refusing or neglecting to answer the census is punishable by fines of $100,
OilemFirchen
Jun 2013
#55
They also printed the leaks of another whistle blower. One Daniel Ellsberg.
Tierra_y_Libertad
Jun 2013
#6
I seem to recall someone once saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat
Th1onein
Jun 2013
#13
"It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal."
DesMoinesDem
Jun 2013
#20
"Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul . . . "
ucrdem
Jun 2013
#22
This is no more sophisticated than right wingers declaring the EPA or OSHA or IRS to be "criminal."
treestar
Jun 2013
#39
Uh oh. Guess the Army Times won't be carrying the story. Guess the Pentagon will cut NYT from
silvershadow
Jun 2013
#51