
Obama presents NSA reforms with plan to end government storage of call data - robin_reala
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/17/obama-nsa-reforms-end-storage-americans-call-data
======
acabal
Wow, this is a whole lot of nothing. Instead of recognizing the problem of
having secret Star Chamber-ish courts in the first place, he just says "yeah
we're just _really_ going to make sure the NSA goes to them first."

Mass storage of phone conversations doesn't appear to be ended, just shuffled
off to some private contractor instead of being NSA-internal.

Phone records aren't even the biggest concern in the first place. The _real_
scary thing is their Internet firehose taps at places like AT&T room 641A and
their Utah datacenter built to store exabytes upon exabytes of data. Put two
and two together-- _that 's_ the worry. Not a peep about that.

This is literally nothing. None of the core issues have been addressed. He's
just changed the window-dressing.

~~~
latj
No, its something. Its saying the U.S. spymasters will not spy on Germany's
spymasters without getting the approval of the secret U.S. kangaroo court. I
dont know about you but I'm feeling more confident in the system already.

------
liquidise
"… because nothing in that initial review, and nothing i have learned since,
indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or be
cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens." \- Obama

I had a very hard time getting past this line he fed at ~11 minutes in. If
that is the presumed mindset, you can draw some very broad (and i fear
accurate) assumptions about the changes going forward.

~~~
rayiner
This isn't a line. Everything I've seen in the leaks indicates an intent by
the NSA to try and stay within the contours of the law. They _are_ allowed to
collect whatever foreign data they want, and they _are_ , at least based on
reasonable interpretations of existing precedents, allowed to collect metadata
about phone calls.

You can certainly draw assumptions from that: they aren't going to back away
from these very reasonable interpretations unless the Supreme Court makes them
untenable by, say, rejecting the Third Party Doctrine, but given the law
that's on the books, it's accurate to say that what has been leaked is not
consistent with the NSA actively seeking to ignore the law.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
Everything I've seen has been a consistent effort by the NSA to eviscerate the
intent of fundamental laws through clever loopholes of various implementations
and rulings, often from completely different contexts.

They covered their asses to keep from going down for actual criminal activity,
but I'm not willing to say that they seem to have placed any emphasis on the
fundamental liberties or protections that the Constitution is supposed to
afford.

Even their secret court has pointed out that they're crossing the line
(likely, more than once).

I mean, it's at the point that they're having to lie to a secret, relatively
unaccountable court because even that won't buy their bullshit.

~~~
rayiner
Smith v. Maryland squarely says that your privacy interest in your phone calls
ends to the extent that your phone call metadata is exposed to third parties.
That's not a "loophole" it's a delineation of the boundary of the right. And
leveraging Smith v. Maryland isn't taking advantage of a loophole in a
"completely different context" but rather applying the reasoning of the case
in the same context in which the case arose: is it a search to collect the
meta-data of a phone call from the phone company? You may think Smith v.
Maryland needs to be overturned, but for now, the NSA is entitled to rely on
it.

As for the "intent of fundamental laws" the intent of the 4th amendment was to
prevent customs officials from trespassing on private property. The founders
never talked about the "right of privacy" as a coherent concept. The "right to
privacy" was conjured from the "penumbras" of the Constitution (i.e. thin air)
just a couple of decades before Smith v. Maryland was decided.

~~~
glitchdout
What exactly is the point you're trying to make here? That this is all legal?
They have at least violated the SPIRIT of the law.

Also, you are ignoring all other reports that the NSA is storing CONTENT of
every means of communication.

Just this week, it was revealed that they store hundreds of millions of text
messages:

* [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-mi...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep)

They also store every single phone call made in the US:

* [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec1...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec13/whistleblowers_08-01.html)

* [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-fla...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/)

Oh, and thinking about using Skype? Also tapped:

* [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/nsa-taps-skype-ch...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/nsa-taps-skype-chats-newly-published-snowden-leaks-confirm/)

~~~
rayiner
> What exactly is the point you're trying to make here? That this is all
> legal? They have at least violated the SPIRIT of the law.

The "spirit" of the law is to keep government agents from trespassing on your
property looking for contraband. The "right of privacy" wasn't conjured out of
thin air by the Supreme Court until the 1960's. Collecting information under
the Third Party Doctrine violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the 4th
amendment.

> Just this week, it was revealed that they store hundreds of millions of text
> messages:

Are they the text messages of Americans?

> They also store every single phone call made in the US:

If they store every phone call made in the U.S. that would definitely be
illegal. But the evidence that they do this is much flimsier than for the
other things we know they do.

------
Zikes
> Mounting a forceful defence of the NSA, Obama said: "They’re not abusing
> authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls, or read your
> emails."

Yes, they are. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/27/nsa-employee-
sp...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/27/nsa-employee-spied-
detection-internal-memo)

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Just to play devil's advocate - I think he's talking about the NSA as a whole
as a matter of policy, not these notably but otherwise isolated exceptions. It
would simply be impractical and largely useless to listen to every average
joe's conversations.

Also, is there any respite to be had considering the IG was aware of that
particular case? Isn't that ideal?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think he's talking about the NSA as a whole as a matter of policy

The NSA lying to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- as the FISC
called them out for in a ruling which has become public -- about what they are
actually doing in order to get things approved is _prima facie_ evidence that
the intent to be unbound by law was not an exception but a matter of
systematic policy.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
So, follow through. The NSA is abusing its abilities on a systematic basis -
to spy on the personal lives of average people? For political purposes?

------
patrickmay
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized."

The data shouldn't be collected in the first place.

~~~
afterburner
Really, not even when building, say, a RICO case against the mob?

I agree the NSA need to be reigned in, a lot, but there are grounds for
listening in sometimes. Courts need evidence to convict.

EDIT: I agree that some kind of permission from a judge is needed for
oversight.

~~~
neohaven
Get a warrant. You can get evidence using one.

~~~
mpyne
Warrant requires probable cause.

How do you get probable cause without any information? How do you even get
alerted to the idea that you should be opening an investigation into
something, without any information?

I mean, how does that work in court? "Yes Your Honor, we would like to obtain
a warrant to search Abdi Zullah's Internet-based communications for the next 3
months since we think that he maybe might be planning to blow something up.
Maybe. And oh, this is all just a hunch, we've got no evidence at all for this
yet."

You'd be laughed out of court, and rightfully so.

~~~
revscat
Then so be it.

Plenty of criminals have been caught using traditional detective work. No
issues, here. Many FEWER criminals have been caught using blanket
surveillance, and the cost to democracy is high.

I'd rather have the occasional bomber than the government having this kind of
access.

~~~
mpyne
> Plenty of criminals have been caught using traditional detective work.

Yes, but that's on the other side of time's arrow. The whole point to
_counter_ -terrorism is to detect it and stop it _before_ (not after) it has
happened.

~~~
revscat
And that is the cost to living in a free society: occasionally you have to
deal with violent assholes.

Again, I'd rather live in a society where the innocent are free and
unmonitored than one which the NSA, etc., reign supreme. Counter-terrorism
efforts are inherently anti-democratic and anti-freedom, despite protestations
to the contrary.

Not interested.

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ck2
Right after they close gitmo.

He completely ignored all the recommendations of the panel he appointed to
give him recommendations.

------
lvs
He boldly took no action to confront a problem he didn't want to confront at a
time not of his choosing because of a person he doesn't like.

------
sschueller
Prove it mr. president! How do we know the calls won't be stored? The stuff
the NSA is doing is already illegal but I doubt anyone other than whistle
blowers will go to prison.

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nkvl
Why would the executive branch curtail its own power?

------
Pxtl
If the executive really wanted this stuff to be closed, it would be closed.

~~~
rasur
Well, of course the executive doesn't want it closed (for whatever reasons),
this is all grandstanding to placate the simple masses.

------
herf
If data like this requires a bureaucracy to generate, you might be able to
protect it with a bureaucracy. If it's collected automatically and stored in
one place, it is considerably harder to protect.

------
mindslight
Oh no, I thought for sure he would fix everything after he found out about the
spying. The NSA must be blackmailing him! Maybe the Supreme Court will swoop
in and rescue us. Or maybe Hillary in 2016. Someone has to! I am on the verge
of tears right now!!

Let's start a Facebook group - Gmail me!

------
higherpurpose
But Internet data is still fair game?

------
streetnigga
So the data will be handed over to the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton, who as
Snowden showed have a stellar record at keeping secrets.

Bullcock.

------
streetnigga
Here is a quote from a NYTimes article from 2011 that sheds light on the
targets of the military industrial complex at the end of 2010[1]. The
industries various components don't always align to the governments side, more
towards the interest of profits and profit interests:

'The e-mails include what appears to be an exchange on Nov. 9, 2010, between
Aaron Barr, HBGary Federal’s chief executive, and John W. Woods, a Hunton &
Williams partner who focuses on corporate investigations. Mr. Barr recounted
biographical tidbits about the family of a one-time employee of a union-backed
group that had challenged the chamber’s opposition to Obama administration
initiatives like health care legislation.

“They go to a Jewish church in DC,” Mr. Barr apparently wrote. “They have 2
kids, son and daughter.”'

So we are told to believe that this sensitive national security data that is
our collective communications will be safe in the same hands that not only had
the tools they were given access to leaked, but who also had their
correspondences plotting to attack dissidents leaked.

This is so fucked up on so many levels.

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html?_r=0)

