Nobody has started a thread about the NSA/domestic spying?

[Turdacious]

Educate yourselves: Olmstead v. United States. FWIW, it was the law for 39 years.

[Blaidd Drwg]

No surprise it was a prohibition case during the telephone's infancy as a technology. More importantly overturned by Katz v. US....7 to 1 for those keeping score at home.

[Bram]

Educate yourselves: Olmstead v. United States. FWIW, it was the law for 39 years.

From your link:

"Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Court reviewed whether the use of wiretapped private telephone conversations, obtained by federal agents without judicial approval and subsequently used as evidence, constituted a violation of the defendant’s rights provided by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that neither the Fourth Amendment nor the Fifth Amendment rights of the defendant were violated. This decision was later overturned by Katz v. United States in 1967.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States

Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court case discussing the nature of the "right to privacy" and the legal definition of a "search". The Court’s ruling refined previous interpretations of the unreasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment to count immaterial intrusion with technology as a search, overruling Olmstead v. United States and Goldman v. United States. Katz also extended Fourth Amendment protection to all areas where a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy".

Justice Harlan’s Concurring opinion summarizes the essential holdings of the majority: “(a) that an enclosed telephone booth is an area where, like a home, and unlike a field, a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy; (b) that electronic as well as physical intrusion into a place that is in this sense private may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment; and (c) that an invasion of a constitutionally protected area by federal authorities is, as the Court has long held, presumptively unreasonable in the absence of a search warrant.”[1]

[Turdacious]

No surprise it was a prohibition case during the telephone's infancy as a technology. More importantly overturned by Katz v. US....7 to 1 for those keeping score at home.

So how many conviction that were legal under Olmstead were overturned because of the Katz ruling?

[Blaidd Drwg]

No surprise it was a prohibition case during the telephone's infancy as a technology. More importantly overturned by Katz v. US....7 to 1 for those keeping score at home.

So how many conviction that were legal under Olmstead were overturned because of the Katz ruling?

How many convictions were overturned after Miranda?

But then,you understand how the appeals process works so you would never such a reductionist.
You're just pointing out fore the good of the order, the central tenets of your philosophy.

Nothing to see here.
It could be worse.
Reagan's cock tasted like candy

[Pinky]

What's the point of this tangent?

[Turdacious]

No surprise it was a prohibition case during the telephone's infancy as a technology. More importantly overturned by Katz v. US....7 to 1 for those keeping score at home.

So how many conviction that were legal under Olmstead were overturned because of the Katz ruling?

How many convictions were overturned after Miranda?

But then,you understand how the appeals process works so you would never such a reductionist.
You're just pointing out fore the good of the order, the central tenets of your philosophy.

Nothing to see here.
It could be worse.
Reagan's cock tasted like candy

LOL. I do know how the process for limiting FISA authority works. You could be in diapers before SCOTUS makes a decision on this issue that you even remotely like. Right(s) and wrong are irrelevant until that happens.

[Blaidd Drwg]

His entire tangent is summed here....

Right(s) and wrong are irrelevant

It's not worth getting wound up about NSA wiretapping...After careful consideration, Turd has determine SCOTUS to be a complicated,slow moving body.

Move along. Nothing to see here.
Doyou kids like Candy?

[Bram]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/0 ... -nsa-vote/

Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash

[Protobuilder]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/0 ... -nsa-vote/

Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash

Damn. Saw the divided vote and figured that something like this was behind it but hadn't actually seen anything.

[TerryB]

Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash

That's weird.

[Andy83]

Hey you two learned constitutional bloviators, just don't have a telephone. Problem solved!

[TerryB]

Oh look, that Weiner guy is sexting again!

Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Cops

Philip Bump 10:09 AM ET

Michele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which prompts the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?

Catalano (who is a professional writer) describes the tension of that visit.

[T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked. ...

Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.

The men identified themselves as members of the "joint terrorism task force." The composition of such task forces depend on the region of the country, but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, include a variety of federal agencies. Among them: the FBI and Homeland Security.

(Update, 12:50 p.m.: The Guardian confirmed with the FBI that the agency was aware of the visit, but that it was conducted by local police on Long Island. Local police forces participate in joint terrorism task forces, as in the Boston example above.)

Ever since details of the NSA's surveillance infrastructure were leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency has been insistent on the boundaries of the information it collects. It is not, by law, allowed to spy on Americans — although there are exceptions of which it takes advantage. Its PRISM program, under which it collects internet content, does not include information from Americans unless those Americans are connected to terror suspects by no more than two other people. It collects metadata on phone calls made by Americans, but reportedly stopped collecting metadata on Americans' internet use in 2011. So how, then, would the government know what Catalano and her husband were searching for?

It's possible that one of the two of them is tangentially linked to a foreign terror suspect, allowing the government to review their internet activity. After all, that "no more than two other people" ends up covering millions of people. Or perhaps the NSA, as part of its routine collection of as much internet traffic as it can, automatically flags things like Google searches for "pressure cooker" and "backpack" and passes on anything it finds to the FBI.

Or maybe it was something else. On Wednesday, The Guardian reported on XKeyscore, a program eerily similar to Facebook search that could clearly allow an analyst to run a search that picked out people who'd done searches for those items from the same location. How those searches got into the government's database is a question worth asking; how the information got back out seems apparent.

It is also possible that there were other factors that prompted the government's interest in Catalano and her husband. He travels to Asia, she notes in her article. Who knows. Which is largely Catalano's point.

They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.

One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.

But the NSA doesn't collect data on Americans, so this certainly won't happen to you.

[Herv100]

Move along, nothing to see here

http://news.yahoo.com/u-declassify-docu ... 21541.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New revelations from former security contractor Edward Snowden that U.S. intelligence agencies have access to a vast online tracking tool came to light on Wednesday, as lawmakers put the secret surveillance programs under greater scrutiny.

The Guardian, citing documents from Snowden, published National Security Agency training materials for the XKeyscore program, which the British newspaper described as the NSA's widest-reaching system that covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet."

Intelligence analysts can conduct surveillance through XKeyscore by filling in an on-screen form giving only a "broad justification" for the search and no review by a court or NSA staff, the newspaper said.

Snowden's disclosures to media that U.S. intelligence agencies collected data on phone calls and other communications of Americans and foreign citizens as a tool to fight terrorism have sparked uproar in the United States and abroad.

Intelligence officials insist the surveillance programs helped thwart terrorist attacks and saved many American lives.

"The implication that NSA's collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false," the agency said in a statement in response to the Guardian's new report, calling XKeyscore part of "NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system."

Opposition to the sweeping surveillance has been gaining traction in Congress, despite intense lobbying on the intelligence agencies' behalf from the Obama administration, congressional leaders and members of the House of Representatives and Senate Intelligence Committees.

President Barack Obama scheduled a meeting for Thursday with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence Committees, to discuss programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a White House official said on Wednesday.

Intelligence officials were grilled at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday about their data gathering, the lack of transparency and security lapses that let Snowden get away with so much information.

SENATE, HOUSE LEGISLATION

Two Democratic members of the committee, Senators Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal, said they would introduce legislation on Thursday to force the Obama administration to provide more information about the data collection programs, including how many Americans' records were reviewed by federal agents.

"The government has to give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans' privacy," Franken said.

Senior intelligence officials at the hearing said they were open to making some changes in the system.

Keith Alexander, the NSA director, jousted with hecklers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday as he defended the U.S. spy agency's surveillance programs before a crowd of cybersecurity experts and hackers.

"Read the Constitution!" one shouted. But the four-star general replied: "I have. So should you," to sustained applause.

Last week, the House defeated by a narrow 217-205 margin a bill that would have cut funding of the NSA program that collects the phone records. Strong support for the measure - bolstered by an unlikely alliance of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans - surprised many observers.

Snowden, who has been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act and had his passport revoked, left Hong Kong more than a month ago and is stuck in limbo at a Moscow airport while seeking asylum in Russia, which has refused to extradite him.

"If a 29-year-old school dropout could come in and take out massive, massive amounts of data, it's obvious there weren't adequate controls," Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee chairman, said at the hearing. "Has anybody been fired?"

John Inglis, the NSA's deputy director, said no one had been dismissed and no one had offered to resign.

GOVERNMENT DECLASSIFIES DOCUMENTS

The director of national intelligence released three declassified documents on Wednesday in the "interest of increased transparency." They explained the bulk collection of phone data - one of the secret programs revealed by Snowden.

Much of what is in the newly declassified documents has already been divulged in public hearings by intelligence officials. The released documents included 2009 and 2011 reports on the NSA's "Bulk Collection Program," carried out under the U.S. Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation passed shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

They also included an April 2013 order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which directed communications company Verizon to hand over data from millions of Americans' telephone calls. The declassified documents said the data would only be used when needed for authorized searches.

"Although the programs collect a large amount of information, the vast majority of that information is never reviewed by anyone in the government, because the information is not responsive to the limited queries that are authorized for intelligence purposes," the 2009 report said.

But the secret NSA slide show from 2008, posted by the Guardian on its website, showed that XKeyscore allowed analysts to access databases that collect and index online activity around the world, including searching for email addresses, extracted files, phone numbers or chat activity.

[TerryB]

Don't worry, they only target terrorists and foreigners.

[Herv100]

Indeed. Good thing the talking heads are letting everyone know the new definition of terrorist, too!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aFzc9GKm9U[/youtube]

[DrDonkeyLove]

Don't worry, they only target terrorists and foreigners.

And those 1, 2 & 3 jumps away.
• All calls to/from the suspected terrorist (jump 1)
• All calls made by the people with calls to/from the terrorist (jump 2)
• All calls made by anybody with calls to/from those in jump 2 (jump 3)

Jumps sound crazy? I'm just 4 jumps from Obama himself. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people are 3 jumps from Snowden, Manning, or one of the Tsarnaev brothers. But, it's all for our own good and if we're not guilty we have nothing to fear.

[baffled]

Don't worry, they only target terrorists and foreigners.

And those 1, 2 & 3 jumps away.
• All calls to/from the suspected terrorist (jump 1)
• All calls made by the people with calls to/from the terrorist (jump 2)
• All calls made by anybody with calls to/from those in jump 2 (jump 3)

Jumps sound crazy? I'm just 4 jumps from Obama himself. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people are 3 jumps from Snowden, Manning, or one of the Tsarnaev brothers. But, it's all for our own good and if we're not guilty we have nothing to fear.

An Arab dude, who doesn't work but his wife does, was in my PT office this week saying the same thing. His wife, before he got there, was talking about learning how to cook for him, then he came in. Started talking about how our lives are online, and it shouldn't bother you if you're not doing anything wrong.

I was dumbfounded.