Snowdon is a dummy

I am trying to makes sense of the ruling, so forgive me ahead of time for stupid questions.

On the one hand they can't inspect it but on the other hand they can if it relates to national security or if Miranda might be charged with terrorism?

This was the time it's . . . I think we've covered before: It was during the time of what they called The Great Binge, the period from the, sort of, 1880s up until the First World War, when everyone was on drugs, seemingly all the time. And you could go to Fortnum and Mason's at the beginning of the First World War, and you could order a hamper for your boys at the front, which included heroine, cocaine, syringes . . . It was all legal, and it was all--

If the quotation I used referred to what has already happened, then there would be no point in us sitting around talking about it. I used it as a warning about what could happen. I thought that was quite clear.

You may think people in the future may look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. Others could say those in the future would look back and wonder how governments managed to get away with all that ****, similarly to when we look at the unregulated sale of heroin in the late 19th Century.

Quote:

This was the time it's . . . I think we've covered before: It was during the time of what they called The Great Binge, the period from the, sort of, 1880s up until the First World War, when everyone was on drugs, seemingly all the time. And you could go to Fortnum and Mason's at the beginning of the First World War, and you could order a hamper for your boys at the front, which included heroine, cocaine, syringes . . . It was all legal, and it was all--

https://sites.google.com/site/qitranscripts/transcripts/5x06

I prefer the latter future vision.

Here's the problem I have with that thinking. We are not a democracy. We're a constitutional republic who democratically elects representatives to uphold the constitution. When you pledge allegiance to the flag it includes the line, "And to the Republic for which it stands". The republic for which we all stand is the republic granted and proclaimed under the constitution.

Our government writes laws all the time. They sometimes write laws that they know are unconstitutional and sometimes they write laws that they think may not pass constitution muster but go with it until such time as the courts prove otherwise. I believe this is one of those times. The recently released DOJ justification document is thin at best, but more like swiss cheese in its rationale.

Here's my other problem with that thinking. Government employees are paid by the taxpayers. So are government contractors. When those charged with the oversight of our constitution are in bed with those they are supposed to be tracking through campaign contributions and/or stock holdings in the companies receiving government contracts then I believe they have a major conflict of interest and should be removed from such oversight.

No, I don't live in a hyperbolic all-or-nothing reality. I don't advocate left or right, top-down or bottom-up governance, or any other state of absolutism. We've swung so far out on the paranoid edge that we've embraced the idea of deficit spending (i.e., borrowing large sums of money) to pay for functionality that has already been deemed unconstitutional even by the minimum review that the FISA court gives.

I think this discussion is healthy and necessary. It's time to come back to the center of the pendulum and take serious stock of just what it is we're doing to ourselves and everyone else on the planet.

Lavabit founder: 'My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me'
Since shuttering his email service, which was used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Ladar Levison has been stuck in a Kafkaesque legal battle – and that's about all he can say

The Obama administration has created a surveillance state on a scale not seen since senator Joe McCarthy's infamous 1950s crackdown on suspected communists, according to the tech executive caught up in crossfire between the NSA and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"We are entering a time of state-sponsored intrusion into our privacy that we haven't seen since the McCarthy era. And it's on a much broader scale," Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, told the Guardian. The email service was used by Snowden and is now at the center of a potentially historic legal battle over privacy rights in the digital age.

Levison closed down his service this month, posting a message about a government investigation that would force him to "become complicit in crimes against the American people" were he to stay in business. The 32-year-old is now stuck in a Kafkaesque universe where he is not allowed to talk about what is going on, nor is he allowed to talk about what he's not allowed to talk about without facing charges of contempt of court.

It appears that Levison – who would not confirm this – has received a national security letter (NSL), a legal attempt to force him to hand over any and all data his company has so that the US authorities can track Snowden and anyone he communicated with. The fact that he closed the service rather than comply may well have opened him up to other legal challenges – about which he also can not comment.

What he will say is that he is locked in a legal battle he hopes one day will finally make it clear what the US government can and can not legally demand from companies. "The information technology sector of our country deserves a legislative mandate that will allow us to provide private and secure services so our customers, both here and abroad, don't feel they are being used as listening posts for an American surveillance network," he says.

And in the meantime what he will not do is stay silent – within legal limits. "I will stand on my soapbox and shout and shout as loudly as I can for as long as people will listen. My biggest fear is that the sacrifice of my business will have been in vain. My greatest hope is that same sacrifice will result in a positive change," he says, words that closely echo Snowden's own feelings about becoming a whistleblower.

Levison first heard of Snowden when he revealed himself in the Guardian in June. The first he knew about Lavabit's involvement was when Snowden used a lavabit.com account to announce a press conference at Moscow's airport, where he was left in limbo following his flight from Hong Kong.

"It's not my place to decide whether what Snowden did is right or wrong," said Levison. "I understand the need for secrecy. I understand that the government needs to keep the names of people they are currently investigating and doing surveillance on secret. I am wholly opposed, and find it contrary to our way of life, for the government to keep the methods that they use to conduct that surveillance a national secret. What they are really doing is using that secrecy to hide un-American actions from the general public," he says.

The extent of government surveillance illustrated by Snowden's leaks shows that the Obama administration is willing "to sacrifice the privacy of the many so they can conduct surveillance on the few", Levison said.

As his legal woes mounted he and his lawyer, Virginia-based Jesse Binnall, set up a fund in the hope of raising some cash. "If there's one thing the government has it's no shortage of lawyers. My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me," he says. "If you took all the people we currently have employed as peeping toms and turned them into school teachers, we'd have a much smarter country," he said.

Levison said he is overwhelmed by the support he has received. The fund already has $140,000 – most of it in $5 and $10 donations.

"Mainstream America is starting to realise just how easy it is for their government to spy on them. And more importantly they are realising that their government is spying on them." The extent of all this surveillance would have a "chilling effect on democracy", he said.
[... ... ...)

We tried that with Bush jr..

Actually to get nick picky about it, the program that the FISC deemed to be unconstitutional in 2011 has been discontinued so we are not actually paying for that particular program.

On the larger main part, I get it, we do have an extremely large NSA program which obviously needs better oversight and general overhaul.

Quote:

Lavabit founder: 'My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me'
Since shuttering his email service, which was used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Ladar Levison has been stuck in a Kafkaesque legal battle – and that's about all he can say

The Obama administration has created a surveillance state on a scale not seen since senator Joe McCarthy's infamous 1950s crackdown on suspected communists, according to the tech executive caught up in crossfire between the NSA and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"We are entering a time of state-sponsored intrusion into our privacy that we haven't seen since the McCarthy era. And it's on a much broader scale," Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, told the Guardian. The email service was used by Snowden and is now at the center of a potentially historic legal battle over privacy rights in the digital age.

Levison closed down his service this month, posting a message about a government investigation that would force him to "become complicit in crimes against the American people" were he to stay in business. The 32-year-old is now stuck in a Kafkaesque universe where he is not allowed to talk about what is going on, nor is he allowed to talk about what he's not allowed to talk about without facing charges of contempt of court.

It appears that Levison – who would not confirm this – has received a national security letter (NSL), a legal attempt to force him to hand over any and all data his company has so that the US authorities can track Snowden and anyone he communicated with. The fact that he closed the service rather than comply may well have opened him up to other legal challenges – about which he also can not comment.

What he will say is that he is locked in a legal battle he hopes one day will finally make it clear what the US government can and can not legally demand from companies. "The information technology sector of our country deserves a legislative mandate that will allow us to provide private and secure services so our customers, both here and abroad, don't feel they are being used as listening posts for an American surveillance network," he says.

And in the meantime what he will not do is stay silent – within legal limits. "I will stand on my soapbox and shout and shout as loudly as I can for as long as people will listen. My biggest fear is that the sacrifice of my business will have been in vain. My greatest hope is that same sacrifice will result in a positive change," he says, words that closely echo Snowden's own feelings about becoming a whistleblower.

Levison first heard of Snowden when he revealed himself in the Guardian in June. The first he knew about Lavabit's involvement was when Snowden used a lavabit.com account to announce a press conference at Moscow's airport, where he was left in limbo following his flight from Hong Kong.

"It's not my place to decide whether what Snowden did is right or wrong," said Levison. "I understand the need for secrecy. I understand that the government needs to keep the names of people they are currently investigating and doing surveillance on secret. I am wholly opposed, and find it contrary to our way of life, for the government to keep the methods that they use to conduct that surveillance a national secret. What they are really doing is using that secrecy to hide un-American actions from the general public," he says.

The extent of government surveillance illustrated by Snowden's leaks shows that the Obama administration is willing "to sacrifice the privacy of the many so they can conduct surveillance on the few", Levison said.

As his legal woes mounted he and his lawyer, Virginia-based Jesse Binnall, set up a fund in the hope of raising some cash. "If there's one thing the government has it's no shortage of lawyers. My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me," he says. "If you took all the people we currently have employed as peeping toms and turned them into school teachers, we'd have a much smarter country," he said.

Levison said he is overwhelmed by the support he has received. The fund already has $140,000 – most of it in $5 and $10 donations.

"Mainstream America is starting to realise just how easy it is for their government to spy on them. And more importantly they are realising that their government is spying on them." The extent of all this surveillance would have a "chilling effect on democracy", he said.
[... ... ...)

Source and full report

"The information technology sector of our country deserves a legislative mandate that will allow us to provide private and secure services so our customers, both here and abroad, don't feel they are being used as listening posts for an American surveillance network," he says.

My reading is that it was tweaked, but not discontinued and continues to this day. The tweaking was given the ok (as in minimization procedures were enhanced) but the activity did not stop.

The court document, dated October 3, 2011, found some of the NSA's collections to be in breach of the Fourth Amendment, which gives U.S. persons protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It's not the first time the opinion has been released. It was published in January, but the document was so heavily redacted it was impossible to read, bar a single sentence that offered nothing of value.


In the readable (albeit still heavily redacted) opinion, the court said it was "troubled" that the government's revelations over the NSA's acquisition of Internet traffic was the third time in less than three years in which the government disclosed a "substantial misrepresentation" of the scope of its collection programs.

The now-discontinued "upstream" program diverted large quantities of international data from fiber cables running in and out of the U.S. into a data center, where it could be stored and analyzed.

At some point, we have to accept that the people we have elected to lead us...are leading us. And when they are leading us to where we do not want to go...we vote them out.

Some would prefer the former.

So he is saying that our government should set up a system where people planning to destroy our country can have safe communications withing their network?

Wow!

Presidents Bush and Obama have asserted the right to place certain individuals in military detention, without trial, in furtherance of their authorized use of force. That is, whom did Congress authorize the President to detain when it passed the AUMF [Authorization for the Use of Military Force]? On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1021 of that statute, which fits on a single page, is Congress’ first — and, to date, only — foray into providing further clarity on that question. Of particular importance for our purposes, Section 1021(b)(2) appears to permit the President to detain anyone who was part of, or has substantially supported, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.

Both President Obama and George W. Bush have authorized the detention or killing of American citizens without any due process.