General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Get One Thing Clear: NSA Domestic Spy Op Is FASCISM [View all]reusrename
(1,716 posts)Like I said, it ignores facts, for one thing, and then it also raises concerns that nobody really has, or at least it raises concerns that I have never felt very strongly about while ignoring the ones that have my hair on fire.
There are three separate primary concerns, for sure:
First, what are the privacy/property issues associated with the warrants that are used to acquire metadata from the various corporations?
Second, what policy is in place to acquire the warrants required for the recording and listening to phone conversations/reading emails?
Third, what are all of these secret courts really up to?
So these first two would be my primary concerns, although there is no denying that secret courts are a rather scary artifact of past fascist states. Then there are, of course, all the additional questions of whether or not the laws regarding these programs are constitutional and whether or not they are even being followed. This part, the part about faithfully following the law has always been the case with all 4th Amendment issues, ever since the country was founded. Nothing at all new here and this seems to be the only thing that the stevenleser argument is focused on.
(An additional fourth important question does exists in my mind, which is the intellectual property issues that, to my knowledge, have never been addressed. The metadata is intellectual property that probably belongs to the corporations that collect it. It certainly has value so the government is exercising a taking without a jury trial. I just dont understand how that squares with the Constitution because even under an imminent domain case, the right to a jury trial is inalienable. But lets set aside the property issues for the rest of this essay.)
Apples
Lets look at the individual warrants required to monitor individual communications. By this I mean the opening of recorded emails or the listening in on digitally recorded phone conversations.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the order of things. The analysts can look at anything in their database (which includes recordings of all our conversations and emails) with little or no oversight. I think it works something like this:
1) Yes, they do need a separate warrant in order to access content of individual phone calls/emails.
2) Yes, the analyst has legal authority to access content of individual phone calls/emails of anyone, on his own, without first getting a separate warrant.
These are consistent statements. The FISA law allows 72 hours after the fact to seek the warrant.
My understanding is that the analyst has legal access, on his own authority, once he has been verbally authorized by either the Attorney General or the Director of National Intelligence. I think the analyst only need fill out a form in order to take a peek at anything.
At least this is my current understanding of the law and the policy. These analysts, once verbally approved, might might be compared to the robosigners we found in the banking fraud.
There is one important difference; unlike the illegal robosigners for the banks, Congress, the Adminstration, and the Courts all seem to have made this process perfectly legal.
If you start to parse the Q&A information with this timeline in mind, it starts to reveal an amazing consistency. Many of the contradictory claims evaporate.
Oranges
The concern about metadata collection is completely new, and it has to do with the use of this information. Metadata is used to create the targets for a counterinsurgency operation. Sometimes (or according to research, in most cases) the most influential person in a social network (or insurgency) is not the most high profile or the most vocal individual in the group. With very large groups (OWS for example), this new technology identifies those individuals who's participation in the group is the most critical.
That, in a nutshell, is the purpose for which the metadata is being used. It should be obvious how this information can be used/misused to affect our first amendment freedoms, specifically our right to peaceably assemble. There are a couple of stories floating around today about how the MIC is targeting opponents of the keystone pipeline. This counterinsurgeny technology and training is being used against law-abiding citizens right here in America.
Because the algorithms being used are easily handled by computers, and because no errors are introduced by trying to decode or translate any communication content, the system can create a very precise mapping of our social networks. Only actual metadata associated with each communication is logged into the software, and from that the algorithms sort out the social connections.
Almost everything about this particular type of surveillance is new. The science behind the algorithms that are used and the computers that store and sift the data are new. The idea behind controlling the pubic is not new, however. It has been done before, and very effectively, even without this new weapon.
This all fits into the bigger picture of the subject of this OP. Remember that our country was founded by insurgents. Many, if not all of our heroes, would have been easily thwarted under this type of surveillance regime and folks have written about how Paul Revere could have been stopped.
For some basic info about how the science is implemented, google the keywords: thesis+insurgent+social+network
This use of the metadata to undermine our right to peaceably assemble seems to be the more dangerous issue. This is an unmistakable mark of tyranny. The eavesdropping, OTOH, can be used to disrupt/detain/dissuade/discredit a target. It is the scientific selection of targets which is what thwarts our (the ones who are trying to change things) ability to properly organize any resistance. This is serious. Without organization we have no idea at whom to aim our pitchforks.
Basically, we are racing toward future where you either support the 1% or else you are a terrorist. This path leads to fascism and the restoration of slavery. There is no doubt about it.