

Ex-US security official: Prism 'fully authorised by US law' [video] - coherentpony
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22851199

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bambax
The word "intelligence" should really not be used to describe this program. In
Latin _intelligere_ means "to understand"; an "intelligent" person is a clever
person.

What the NSA is doing is gathering ALL possible information in the remote
chance that an infinite part of it might maybe be useful some day. At the time
of collection, no effort is made to assess the relevance of the information
collected.

This is not clever or "intelligent" in any sense of the term.

"Intelligence" for an intelligence agency means doing actual spy work; namely,
having agents infiltrate terrorist networks and learn about their plans (and
risking their lives in the process).

This is carpet-bombing. This is cowardly. This is despicable.

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dnautics
this is worth watching to see the mental gymnastics that the locutor goes
through to justify 'legality'. While yes, the program may have had the FORM of
a legal procedure, it's clear that at some level, he understands the absurdity
of reconciling the ideal of having a government accountable, and being subject
to oversight - with the fact that the legislature has crafted a law that gives
authority to an organization that can secretly expand its powers. Yet he tries
to anyway, and he stammers like crazy - because there's something wrong at the
core that he's trying to paper over. 'The conversation should have happened
five years ago' \- with what? Deposition of witnesses that have come from the
future to testify that the secret system that can bootstrap its own rules has
not gotten out of hand and has been effective beyond their wildest dreams?

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joelrunyon
Isn't there an article circulating that that "law" was found
"unconstitutional" already, but that that ruling was classified as soon as it
was made?

I can't find it now, but I'll keep looking.

~~~
DannyBee
I think you are referring to a FISA opinion that found some 4th amendment
violations were had, and that they felt the "spirit" of the law was being
violated.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-
departme...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-
electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion)

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bmmayer1
"US law" is not a valid justification. Segregation was US law. Slavery was US
law. The detention of Japanese Americans during WWII was US law. "It's the
law" is a useless moral justification unless the law is grounded in something
greater than merely the paper it is written on. Especially when it is written
by the government who uses it to defend their creeping invasions of our
liberty.

The reason we have a Constitution is to constrain the power of the government
to make such laws, and if such laws do exist, they are (or should be)
considered invalid.

~~~
dnautics
exactly. The argument this guy is making is structurally equivalent to if the
courts told Korematsu, "the conversation about internment should have happened
in 1941, when congress gave the military broad powers to prosecute the war. If
you didn't want the military to intern civilians, you would have written a
prohibition against the power of internment into the declaration of war."

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mtgx
Time to change the laws then. These laws were rushed through Congress with
little public debate, and whenever EFF or ACLU tried to fight them the Obama
administration tried to dismiss the cases or stop them somehow.

I want to see the constitutionality of scooping 100 million phone records at
once, gathering all data from ISP cables, and asking Google and others for
probably thousands if not millions of users' profiles and logs at once, being
tested in Court, and I want it all to reach the Supreme Court.

 _Then_ we can establish how legal everything was. You can't trust Congress
with any of the laws they've been passing. Remember the NDAA and the
indefinite detention clause? That was another one rushed through around new
year's eve time. This needs to stop, or I can't ever take them seriously when
they say "it's all legal".

~~~
rickmode
Indeed. The question isn't whether the surveillance was legal, but rather if
the laws allowing it are constitutional.

------
dmk23
This whole "scandal" is a tempest in a teapot stirred up by the privacy fear-
mongering industry.

There is nothing to suggest any wrongdoing by any NSA personnel involved
(except for Snowden). No harm of this NSA program to any US individual has
ever been demonstrated, let alone proven. No proof of any abuse whatsoever.

What we have here is a publicity-seeker with a sensationalist story blown out
of proportion to drive pageviews, at the cost of undermining and compromising
the program that has successfully foiled terrorist plots. Manufactured outrage
drives modern media. We should be thanking the designers and operators of
PRISM.

[http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Pl...](http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Plot-
Involved-Emails-Sent-to-an-Al-Qaeda-Email-Account)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-
calle...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-called-
crucial-to-fight-terror.html)

PS: It is also pretty funny how the people who claim to be standing up for our
liberties rush to downvote opinions different from their own

~~~
lucian1900
You are perfectly free to express your opinion and we are perfectly free to
express our disagreement.

~~~
twoodfin
That's not what the down arrows are for.

