FISA Court Rubberstamps Yet Another Renewal Of NSA's Collecting All Your Phone Data
from the rubber-stamp-inked-and-ready-to-go dept
In a move that will shock no one, the FISA Court has, once again, reapproved the NSA's request to collect metadata on pretty much every phone call. The Director of National Intelligence put out a statement once again trying to defend this, and noting that it's appealing the one court ruling against the program (which is true, they filed an appeal this morning).It is the administration's view, consistent with the recent holdings of the United States District Courts for the Southern District of New York and Southern District of California, as well as the findings of 15 judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 36 separate occasions over the past seven years, that the telephony metadata collection program is lawful. The Department of Justice has filed an appeal of the lone contrary decision issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.The announcement also pays lip service to the White House's task force's findings that the program required significant changes claiming that the intelligence community is "open to modifications to this program." Yeah, right. We'll see just how open they are when the changes are actually proposed.
Nevertheless, the Intelligence Community continues to be open to modifications to this program that would provide additional privacy and civil liberty protections while still maintaining its operational benefits.Um, what operational benefits? The task force, multiple Senators, a federal judge and a variety of others have also noted that there are no benefits to the program. None have been shown.
Either way this is just more fluff from the intelligence community. They'll throw some bones to people, pretending to agree to meaningless modifications while fighting hard against any real change to the program. And pay attention, because you can bet that within any change they'll sneak in some other change that undermines it all anyway.
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Filed Under: bulk metadata collection, metadata, nsa, section 215, surveillance
Reader Comments
The First Word
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Huh...
Sure doesn't seem that way.
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Re:
Not sure which is worse, people still voting for an R or D, or the fact that you believed in a politician?
I saw Obama coming miles away, why didn't you? Obama is not much different than Bush.
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Re: Re:
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I didn't waste my time voting. It is now pointless. Real change will come from other means. Neither party represents YOU. They know it, and you need to know it. And as people become aware of it, it tends to explain why the NSA is watching all of us.
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This was not rubber stamped
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-James Clapper
So in other words, we'll support any change so long as it doesn't involve limiting our spying an way, shape, or form.
I know exactly what the alleged felonious liar means by his statement. He's talking about storing all the meta data on private company servers (AT&T Verison), and querying the meta data remotely over the internet. Or better yet, have the NSA employees stationed at AT&T and Verison buildings, do it locally.
If course anything that requires "warrents" and "strong probable cause", is an unacceptable restriction standing in the way of the NSA and AT&T's meta database.
That would interfere with the "operational benefits" of bulk unconstitutional spying, and would be an "unacceptable modification" to the unconstitutional spy program.
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Economic espionage benefits, blackmail material benefits, etc. But of course they can't admit to any of that.
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Get over it already
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Re: Get over it already
How about the way they used to do it, which was at least as effective as spying on literally everybody. How about actual investigative work?
Your response of "just stop participating in society if you don't want to be spied on" isn't just misguided, it's downright impossible.
This mass spying, even if it were effective, is corrosive to society and bad for the nation. The ends don't always justify the means, particularly when the means are more damaging than what the ends are trying to prevent.
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Or did they classify those statements from the FISA court, like thee classify the FISA rulings from the public.
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Either way this is just another instance proving what a joke the FISA 'court' is, showing them to be, once again, nothing more than a sham 'court' that does nothing but agree with the ones who own and control them.
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Spying on the World has Vast and Amazing Benefits
Well there really are a whole bunch of benefits to the progams, absolutely rooms full of benefits in fact, but well, to show them to the public would be the same as incriminating one's self, you see and, well, we can't have that now can we.
Point is though, he aint lying.
The NSA and its contractual buddies in commerce, organized crime and industry have been reaping a serious shit load of benefits from the global surveillance programs for years.
You would be amazed just how hospitable an Anti-American Iraqui Official can be to a visiting US corporation head, after you've shown him a dosier of him and his girlfriend's telephone conversation transcripts, their private emails and an album of telephoto pictures of them doing the dirty through the windows of various meeting places.
Its just that anything that benfits the NSA in any way, is pretty much automatically gonna be detrimental to everyone else on earth... so showing all those accrued benefits - or for that matter, any of those accrued benefits to the public.... that's not gonna happen.
But amazingly, he aint lying on this particular aspect.
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Yet they don't speak to the unconstitutionality of it all...
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Somehow, I think, there is dirt on these cangaroo judges in Snowden docs. Just wait, till that hits the fan.
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