Snowdon is a dummy

And since there are laws regarding a search, I have to submit to it, if the legal procedure had been done correctly.

The only people who should be targeted...are people who are going to commit terroristic activities.

Change it to "The only people who should be targeted...are those people that the police have reasonable grounds to suspect may be engaged in criminal activity, within reason."

Unfortunately nobody is a mind reader, so what you're saying isn't possible...

...but the indiscriminate collection of vast amounts of data isn't the solution.

Frank Apisa wrote:

The only people who should be targeted...are people who are going to commit terroristic activities.

Change it to "The only people who should be targeted...are those people that the police have reasonable grounds to suspect may be engaged in criminal activity, within reason."

Violent criminals are as detrimental to our health as terrorists, but not all criminal activity warrants such a high level of surveillance, not paying a TV licence for instance.

How would you know it was done correctly if it's done in secret?

cicerone imposter wrote:

How would you know it was done correctly if it's done in secret?

We don't have secret courts.

Right!

Or at least, no whistle blower has come along yet to disclose that you have...right?

Article 101
[Ban on extraordinary courts]

(1) Extraordinary courts shall not be allowed. No one may be removed from the jurisdiction of his lawful judge.

(2) Courts for particular fields of law may be established only by a law.

Defending the Obama administration, Paul Krugman pronounced that "the NSA stuff is a policy dispute, not the kind of scandal the right wing wants." Really? In what conceivable sense is this not a serious scandal? If you, as an American citizen, let alone a journalist, don't find it deeply objectionable when top national security officials systematically mislead your representatives in Congress about how the government is spying on you, and repeatedly lie publicly about resulting political controversies over that spying, what is objectionable? If having the NSA engage in secret, indiscriminate domestic spying that warps if not outright violates legal limits isn't a "scandal", then what is?

For many media and political elites, the answer to that question seems clear: what's truly objectionable to them is when powerless individuals blow the whistle on deceitful national security state officials. Hence the endless fixation on Edward Snowden's tone and choice of asylum providers, the flamboyant denunciations of this "29-year-old hacker" for the crime of exposing what our government leaders are doing in the dark, and all sorts of mockery over the drama that resulted from the due-process-free revocation of his passport. This is what our media stars and progressive columnists, pundits and bloggers are obsessing over in the hope of distracting attention away from the surveillance misconduct of top-level Obama officials and their serial deceit about it. Full article

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:

Right!

Or at least, no whistle blower has come along yet to disclose that you have...right?

??? Are you really suggesting that we could have secret courts???

Are you really suggesting that the German people are not capable of being duped?

Quote:

Article 101
[Ban on extraordinary courts]

(1) Extraordinary courts shall not be allowed. No one may be removed from the jurisdiction of his lawful judge.

(2) Courts for particular fields of law may be established only by a law.

Wow. I guess that settles it. At least for Germans...who feel they cannot be duped.

Quote:

If so, it's not only the first time I've heard of such an idea but that really would bring down our complete legal and political system. (We even don't have military courts.)

For the record, I am not saying you guys do have secret courts...or that you secretly spy on other (supposedly friendly) nations, Walter.

But are you suggesting it is beyond the realm of possibility?

Doe The Guardian not normally publish bylines?

But are you suggesting it is beyond the realm of possibility?

Frank Apisa wrote:

But are you suggesting it is beyond the realm of possibility?

Secret courts? Yes. That would be totally impossible.

... or only after a revolution or if we become a satellite state without a constitution after a war or similar.

A former federal judge who granted government surveillance requests has broken ranks to criticise the system of secret courts as unfit for purpose in the wake of recent revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

James Robertson, who retired from the District of Columbia circuit in 2010, was one of a select group of judges who presided over the so-called Fisa courts, set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are intended to provide legal oversight and protect against unnecessary privacy intrusions.

I'd thought that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a secret court.

Quote:

A former federal judge who granted government surveillance requests has broken ranks to criticise the system of secret courts as unfit for purpose in the wake of recent revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

James Robertson, who retired from the District of Columbia circuit in 2010, was one of a select group of judges who presided over the so-called Fisa courts, set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are intended to provide legal oversight and protect against unnecessary privacy intrusions.

Source

You recently had a revolution?

..and there is no way a German government is ever going to overstep the bounds of the law.