
19 Groups Sue NSA Over Data Collection - techinsidr
http://www.securityweek.com/19-groups-sue-nsa-over-data-collection
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unreal37
I think this has a strong chance of succeeding, eventually.

It does seem that PRISM is building a list of who people associate with -
through email and phone communications, or various chat programs. Through this
list of who you associate with, you can certainly start to label people and
deny them rights based on their membership in various groups.

Back in the 1950s, the State Department was asking people to promise they
weren't communists before granting them a passport so they can travel abroad.
The amount of information they can get on people has grown exponentially since
then - and that doesn't mean we have to be less careful with it.

First amendment - freedom of assembly - grounds is a brilliant way to argue
this.

~~~
threeseed
Except that in what way is PRISM preventing you from being able to assemble ?

There is NO evidence that the NSA et al are using this information to target
anything other than the most serious of terrorists. Until we evidence of the
contrary I fail to see how these lawsuits will be able to stick.

~~~
unreal37
The 1958 Supreme Court ruling struck down a law that required groups to
provide their membership lists to the State of Alabama. They don't have to
"prevent" people from being able to assemble, but building lists of which
groups people belongs to still violates their "right to pursue their private
interests privately". So in large part, the right to assemble also includes
the right to be part of any group (even communists!) without the government
needing to know.

~~~
threeseed
But again what evidence is there that the NSA is creating these list of groups
? They could just be simply looking at which individuals a person is speaking
to. It is a subtle distinction but legally a significant one.

I just seem to see a lot of conjecture but no actual evidence.

~~~
obituary_latte
I think especially in light of recent events, it'd be foolish to give them the
benefit of the doubt.

You don't see evidence because these programs are hidden from the populous.
Maybe you're right - we don't know.

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igravious
Metadata collation as impinging on freedom of association. Brilliant! Of
course these concepts are very US-centric so we need to package these ideas up
and sell them globally, adapt them to local markets if you will.

What we need to build is a website based off of Google Maps which allows us to
drill down and wiki style tabulate the social and tech systems that individual
nations are pursuing at the expense of citizen's privacy. The key players and
enablers of these programs need to be highlighted. Questions need to be asked
of our politicians globally exactly when they were thinking of consulting us
about this growing global dragnet, this Leviathan as some have called it,
Panopticon as others have called it.

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foresterh
In simple terms, what do the people in the lawsuit hope to gain from the
lawsuit? If they won, would the NSA have to stop the program, or would the
government have to pass laws saying it was allowed?

I'm just trying to figure out what the end-game is and/or if there is any way
to stop something as powerful and uncontrollable as the NSA (government in
general?) appears to be.

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ChuckMcM
The goal would be to get a permanent injunction barring the activity until
such time as laws were passed making it legal. In the US system of laws its
the way folks force someone to stop doing something when that someone is more
than an individual (you can't put a corporation in jail but you can tell them
that if they do something you will put their leadership in jail [an imperfect
analogy])

~~~
foresterh
"you can't put a corporation in jail but you can tell them that if they do
something you will put their leadership in jail [an imperfect analogy])"

Does leadership, from a corporation either private or government (NSA, CIA,
FTC, etc) ever end up going to jail though? It seems like after the banking
industry was pretty much caught red-handed breaking all kinds of laws and/or
causing all kinds of programs to end or start, none of them ended up behind
bars. I have to think the NSA would be better at avoiding jailtime than
bankers...

Maybe I'm just pessimistic but it seems more like the best this could hope for
is the NSA stopping Prism and then finding out 5-10 years later (or never)
that they started Diamond or some other program that does the same thing
except doesn't record the first 5 seconds of phone calls, or something else
that "obeys the new rules"...

~~~
dragonwriter
> Does leadership, from a corporation either private or government (NSA, CIA,
> FTC, etc) ever end up going to jail though?

Yes. E.g.,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling)

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insickness
It's smart of them to include a variety of groups across the political
spectrum, both left and right. It's interesting how this issue is positioned
and who supports the fight.

~~~
igravious
I don't think smart has anything to do with it. I believe that this issue
transcends normally antagonistic parties. This is something most of us can
agree on.
Left/right/liberal/conservative/anarchist/socialist/capitalist/whatever - we
all expect a certain base level of privacy w.r.t. our private communication,
both contents and metadata.

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babesh
Hooray.

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kooker_spooker
I really don't mind these data collections if it indeed can thwart terror
attacks & can provides an adavtange over China/Russia/Iran, BUT I wish I had
access to the data- like being able to see your own FBI file

Imagine, the NSA for "free" (kinda) has created "Dropbox++"\- all your online
content indexed & backed up

