
In 2015, promising surveillance cases ran into legal brick walls - pavornyoh
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/in-2015-promising-surveillance-cases-ran-into-legal-brick-walls/
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DannyBee
1\. Lawyers and justice systems generally lag societal opinion, not lead it.

2\. s/societal opinion/technology/ as well.

3\. As a result of the above, the most effective and expedient way to get
policy changes is almost never going to be through court, no matter how right
one may be. In this case, the numbers are not really heavily on their side,
and they have trouble doing anything but challenging it in court (see
[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-
america...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-
think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/) vs
[http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/nsa-snooping/survey-
america...](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/nsa-snooping/survey-americans-
divided-government-surveillance-n372276) vs ... ).

3\. While I love them, the EFF has often been wrong over the years about how
far they will get with various lawsuits. They are an advocacy organization,
and so one should take their predictions with a grain of salt.

(This is the part where the article says "Experts felt a shift was equally
imminent. .... "I think it's impossible to tell which case will be the one
that does it, but I believe that, ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to
step in and decide the constitutionality of some of the NSA's practices," Mark
Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars last
year.")

The vast majority of non-advocacy experts i'm aware of did not think most of
these lawsuits would get as far as the EFF did, simply because the odds are
highly against them.

In short, none of this is either surprising, nor is it likely to change
anytime soon.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> 1\. Lawyers and justice systems generally lag societal opinion, not lead it.

> 2\. s/societal opinion/technology/ as well.

2 is usually a feature: if lawyers, justice systems, and regulators in general
could keep up with technology well enough to attempt to regulate it before it
grew far enough, we'd be even more screwed than we already are. One of the few
things helping us is that technology is hard to suppress, and by the time
regulators notice it, it's at least sometimes big enough and popular enough to
fight back. It's too easy to silently crush a technology nobody knows about or
cares about.

~~~
DannyBee
This is a pretty cynical view.

Mainly because these regulators/etc are not driven by themselves, they are
driven by your fellow countrymen ;-)

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zachrose
I'm curious how a case can be ruled moot just because a policy has been
changed. It would seem to me that the lawsuits are seeking damages for privacy
violations that have already occured.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Also, it means the NSA can simply shut down a program whenever evidence of it
is leaked, only to spin it back up under another name and then claim the
program is no longer operational, delaying regulation perpetually.

~~~
gscott
Apparently they are now operating these programs from overseas somehow trying
to avoid u.s jurisdiction. I presume by setting up a friendly country (5 eyes)
for the same data then using their data. Ted Cruz mentioned in a recent
Republican debate now 100% of telephone meta data is collected and the Senate
Foreign Affairs chair went crazy saying he was going to prosecute him for
giving that information out. Things are worse not better.

