Almost Everything About The Bulk Collection Of Phone Data Is Illegal
from the a-simple-explanation dept
We already wrote about the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and its scathing report as to how the program to collect phone records on pretty much every phone call in the US was both illegal and unconstitutional. However, if you don't want to get too down in the weeds over why it's illegal, the absolutely best summary I've seen comes from Julian Sanchez and fits into a tweet:
215 allows FBI to get records relevant to an investigation. PCLOB: NSA program fails on "FBI", "records," "relevant" & "investigation."
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) January 23, 2014
Believe it or not, he's not even being that glib here. Section 215 is pretty clear on all of those things. It's just for the FBI, and allows them to get records relevant to a specific investigation. Yet, the program is run by the NSA, which collects the data, instead of the FBI. It is not collecting "records" as intended by the law, and most of those records are irrelevant, and none of this is tied to any particular investigation. I'm reminded of the joke that the Holy Roman Empire wasn't actually holy, Roman or an empire.215 allows FBI to get records relevant to an investigation. PCLOB: NSA program fails on "FBI", "records," "relevant" & "investigation."
When the law includes four basic conditions, and basically all four of them are not met, the program is beyond illegal. It's just a farce. It's kind of amazing that President Obama and other NSA defenders are still arguing that the program is perfectly fine.
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Filed Under: bulk metadata collection, business records, fbi, julian sanchez, nsa, pclob, section 215, surveillance
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Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
While we can't force the constitution or the Bill of Rights onto others, shouldn't we force our government to follow the 4th Amendment as it's written and apply it to everyone?
After all, the Bill of Rights doesn't say what the government can do, it says what the government can NOT do.
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Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
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Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
Uh... The Bill of Rights is actually the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution and is therefore by definition PART of the Constitution this is kind of redundant, don't you think?
I know I'm being picky and if you had just said "No where in the entire Constitution..." or even flipped it around so you said something like "No where in the Bill of Rights or even the entire Constitution..." then your sentence would have made more sense at least to me. ;)
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Re: Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
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Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
Whose right? The right of the people. What people? Remember that this is an amendment to the Constitution, which begins thus:
Therefore, by simple substitution of equivalent terms,
Just saying.
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Re: Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
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Re: Re: Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
We know exactly who is entitled to those writes. Copyright holders and no one else!
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Re: Re: Wanna know what's REALLY interesting?
But, I can see your point that the whole "People of the United States" thing is implied.
However, my point is, that a literal reading of the Bill of Rights does not include only citizens of America, but everyone and one could make an argument that the spying the NSA does is, without a warrant, 100% unconstitutional, and therefore illegal.
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This is why the insane hunt to find ways to prevent challenges in court from those affected. Standing and the claim of National Security are the two most often heard. But when it gets entered into a court docket, each time it stands the chance of of the court finding the programs illegal through the unconstitutional rulings. This is precisely what they fear as they already know they have exceeded the limits of what they should be able to do and schemed to do so.
Heads should roll over this. Real traitors of the nation should be exposed instead of this combination witch hunt and three ring circus over Snowden who is plainly a whistle blower and without which we would not yet be aware of just how badly the government has went into the security state mode.
No one in government service took an oath to keep you safe. They took an oath to uphold the Constitution and it appears the domestic enemies are one and the same as government figures.
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Re:
You know, they are meeting tonight. Too bad we can't surround the chamber and arrest them all as they come out from the speech.
Or better yet, arrest the president, vice president, and speaker while they're on the dais (rostrum?) and march them out of the chamber in handcuffs, then arrest the rest of them as they leave the senate floor.
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By FBI, they meant Federal [insert agency here]...
By records, they meant recordED...
By Investigation, they meant Past, Present, and Future Investigations not yet realized...
By Relevant, they meant LOLOL.
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Not that funny.
I'm reminded of something a lot less funny, specifically that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is only one of the four things in its name.
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Re: Not that funny.
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215 allows FBI to get records relevant to an investigation.
its the DTIC thats tasked by the NSA to collect the data from the switches . from there , the government shares it with just about everybody and their brother down to the local donut shop cop . ise.gov and dhs fusion centers
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reading fail
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution.
So the twitter quote is not correct, because it over simplifies to attempt to limit what the law specifically allows. The word "relevant" does not appear in the law.
It's a nice attempt to re-write the law, but the law is there in plain enough english.
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Re: reading fail
The word "relevant" appears in 50 USC 1861 (b) (2) (A):
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861
(Cutting off there not to obscure anything, but because there's no reasonable stopping point without including the entire subsection, which means I need to cut off somewhere.)
If you want to argue that this does not require that the things sought actually be relevant, only that there are reasonable grounds to believe such, you might be able to support that - although based on Sensenbrenner's comments, it seems very likely that the law was not intended to allow such an interpretation. Claiming that the word does not appear in the law, however, is simply ignoring the facts.
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Cold dark matter.
Same is true of Cold dark matter.
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When laws are written by criminals....
Hardly amazing at all.
Criminals by their nature, have very little respect for the law unless the law benefits them. Since Bush1, American law has been undergoing a huge rewrite, specifically to allow criminals the freedom they desire to pillage the nation, without fear of incrimination.
That the criminals occupying the White House and their cheerleading squads consider breaking the law to be "perfectly fine", is quite expected.
The criminals in office; because they profit thereby, and the cheerleaders; because they expect to some day be among the crooks in office, or at least benefit financially somehow from the process.
The benefits derived from all of that blackmail material they are collecting are so lucrative that the criminals in office have given only minor consideration to the unlikely repercussions of breaking the law, and in fact assume that their positions of power give them immunity to such repercussions anyway.
Where there is no chance of culpability, there is no reason to not break the law.
Criminals do not expect to be caught anyway.
It is simply not a part of their nature.
It is in fact the thought of getting caught that prevents most citizens from participating in criminal activities.
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biggest terrorist threat to the USA
Prophetically, Osama bin Laden's primary aim in attacking the World Trade Center was actually to make us so frightened that we would sabotage our own freedoms and values, for the sake of safety. And with the NSA's crazy and unethical tactics, bin Ladens' destructive vision has largely come to fruition. The NSA is creepingly turning Osama bin Laden's insane dream into a reality.
More and more I feel a growing sense of horror and dismay at the members of this agency, who seem not to understand the crimes which they are committing, because their careers depend on their not understanding them..
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Re: biggest terrorist threat to the USA
I am amazed at how effective the Fed's cover-up program has been at convincing the American Public that this false flag operation was carried out by a bunch of sheep herders from a cave in Afghanistan.
I really shouldn't be surprised though, since We the People have also fallen for every other false flag operation the Fed has managed since Pearl Harbor.
I suppose it is simply that this one I got to witness in the making.
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