
NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday - benologist
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/us-usa-nsa-termination-idUSKBN0TG27120151127
======
ilamont
_As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by
11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new,
scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said._

"As required by law"? The government violated the Fourth Amendment and the
director of national security committed perjury (1). As required by law,
justice officials and prosecutors should have brought charges against Clapper
and other responsible parties ... yet nothing happened.

What makes the government think that we will trust them to investigate and
prosecute anyone violating our rights in the future, "as required by law"?

1\. [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-
misspoke-d...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke-
didnt-lie-about-nsa-surveillance/)

~~~
rayiner
Where was it found the NSA violated the 4th amendment?

~~~
bediger4000
Oh, please. There comes a time when even you have to give up the legalistic
approach, and just acknowledge plain fact.

The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for
some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is.

If you want legalistic, narrow (razor thin!) interpretations of all "rights",
then they're not really rights, they're just something for lawyers to natter
on about. Further, Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" becomes nothing
but parody.

~~~
rayiner
> The NSA has had dragnet surveillance of most or all of the US internet for
> some years. If that's not a 4th Amendment violation, then nothing is.

Even assuming that were true, I disagree it would be an archetypal 4th
amendment violation. Privacy on the Internet doesn't exist as a matter of
fact. Anyone who controls a router between you and your destination can see
your Internet traffic. When you try to apply the 4th amendment to the
Internet, you're not asking the government not to intrude on an otherwise
private space ( _i.e._ the heart of the 4th amendment). You're asking it to
indulge a purely legal fiction of privacy.

~~~
Zooper
The crux of this argument and the propaganda the current administration
lawyers have been shilling centers around whether these searches (ie, mass
collection of US citizen data) are unreasonable. I reject your argument that
searches are reasonable because the internet infrastructure is currently
fundamentally flawed; as already concluded in Katz v. United States, an
unlawful search occurs when a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is violated.
Given your own argument, any and all attempts by end users to obtain privacy,
via https or otherwise, constitute an individual reasonably expecting privacy
and therefore any information gathered is done so illegally.

~~~
rayiner
The "reasonableness" standard is _objective_ not subjective reasonableness.
It's objectively unreasonable to think that your data in say gmail, which is
stored in a form accessible to many people you've never met, and is in fact
data-mined by the host, is somehow "private."

If I keep an unlocked box full of papers in my neighbors garage, and he
sometimes rifles through them looking for something interesting, can I say
that box is "private"? Maybe if the box is locked and only I have the key
(I.e. Client-side encryption) but not if I send it to him locked but give him
the key (I.e. HTTPS). Again, it's not about legal technicality or technical
technicality. It's about whether the information is actually "private."

~~~
Zigurd
Millimeter wave imaging means any building can be made transparent, and your
privacy within that building is a social construct.

------
digdigdag

      "Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died."
    

It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or
otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation. If their reasoning is that
the bulk surveillance program is necessary to avert terrorism, then surely
they must have known or, at least, gotten a hint of what was due to happen on
that day. Of course, it doesn't work like that.

The NSA's "metadata" collection policies means that a great majority of the
data they collect is harmless "noise". I can understand data collection when
they have narrowed down their leads to a specific person or group, but the
current dragnet they've set up is costing taxpayers millions to store and
manage the data.

~~~
trimbo
> It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad
> or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an
opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." \- Rahm
Emanuel

------
jdp23
A somewhat inaccurate headline. As Marcy Wheeler writes:

"Just a tiny corner of the phone dragnet will shut down, and the government
will continue to collect “telephony metadata records in bulk … including
records of both U.S. and non-U.S. persons” under EO 12333. Hypothetically, for
every single international call that had been picked up under the Section 215
dragnet and more (at a minimum, because NSA collects phone records overseas
with location information), a matching record has been and will continue to be
collected overseas, under EO 12333."

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-
wants-y...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/27/the-government-wants-you-to-
forget-it-will-still-collect-your-phone-records-in-bulk/)

~~~
pdkl95
> international call

It's important to remember that Snowden has confirmed several times that
"international" is referring to the physical wire/fiber/radio they are
tapping, _not_ the people at each end of the call. In a packet switched world,
any call can become "international" if the packets are sent by way of the
Bahamas. ("misconfigured" BGP is a traditional method)

------
SeanDav
And the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus will be holding a press
conference on Monday.

~~~
fpp
"... and from Monday, the official language of the USA will be Swedish. In
addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear
every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check.
Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old..."

(adapted from Woody Allen's Bananas)

------
karmacondon
There's no way to win here. If the government outright abolished the NSA at
noon, there would be dozens of hn comments at 12:01 saying "Yeah, but did they
_really_ abolish it?" or "But what about all the bad things they did when they
existed? or "They'll just do something even worse next".

It seems like distrust of authority is just a part of some people's
personality. Perceived wrong doing by the government in the past has caused
them to distrust the government into perpetuity, even if that same government
does exactly what those people demand. So why should the authorities listen at
all? It's like a convicted felon who can no longer get a job or be part of
society. Why not just go back to a life of crime? You're damned if you and
damned if you don't.

~~~
woodman
Wow, I don't know that I've seen such a perfect example of Battered Woman
Syndrome outside of a rerun of Cops. By "Perceived wrong doing", you mean
clear and well documented violations of the law - right? Portraying people who
don't immediately prostrate themselves before the throne of state power as
having some sort of personality defect is pretty funny as well.

------
caseysoftware
> As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program
> by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the
> new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.

Except every time the White House has said "we're only doing X.." we find out
later that it wasn't true so why should we believe them now?

------
awalton
I'm sure this will go as well as shutting down the bulk email surveillance
program did.

------
ericzawo
Sure they will.

------
paulajohnson
What, again?

------
rbanffy
Good. We can all pretend we believe it.

------
tomp
On Monday, the Pope will convert to Islam.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk will start his journey to Mars.

Wednesday, Isis declares peace.

By Thursday, the static vs. dynamic typing debate will finally be solved.

On Friday, king Salman of Saudi Arabia will donate all his wealth to charity.

And finally, on Saturday, Elon Musk will land on Mars.

~~~
gamesbrainiac
On Sunday, the Vim vs Emacs debate will finally come to an end.

~~~
Zelphyr
This sudden bout of positivity on HN is worrisome.

------
LeoPanthera
No they won't.

------
yanazendo
Can you trust Obama and the NSA to do what they say they are going to do?

------
mtgx
1) NSA shuts down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday.

2) NSA starts totally different and with even less oversight "aggregate" phone
surveillance program by Monday.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-
show-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-email-
analysis-continued-after-nsa-program-ended.html)

