
The Criminal N.S.A. - guelo
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html
======
mtgx
Here's the thing. If file-sharers have the right to _anonymous speech_ , what
does that say about everyone being spied upon by the NSA?

[http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-
anonymous...](http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-have-right-to-anonymous-
speech-court-hears-130627/)

I'm starting to think more and more that beyond this being a US Constitution
issue, it's a _human rights_ issue, and we should fight to ban all such spying
internationally. Yes, I realize how hard that that may be to achieve, and how
long it would probably take, but we need to do it because it's the _right
thing_ for humanity, not because it's easy or hard, just like everyone is
fighting for gay marriage all over the world, and have fought for free speech,
and so on.

~~~
h0w412d
How about we popularize encryption, and take the choice out of the hands of
corporations and governments?

~~~
tommi
How do we do that when people don't care about privacy?

~~~
vidarh
By making the solutions so simple that they pick them _because_ they don't
care either way, but make it slightly more annoying for people still on non-
end-to-end crypto services to communicate with those who are.

If there's enough people who care, then hopefully network effects would slowly
take care of the rest.

------
trevelyan
The public is not acquiescing in surveillance. It is simply rare for the
mainstream media to report on this critically (or at all -- note the lack of
front-page coverage of this story in the New York Times), an appalling
development given the extension of this surveillance apparatus to targeting
journalists.

With that in mind, it is worth noting that the two authors of this piece are
NOT professional journalists, although what they report could and should
easily have been put together by actual staffers.

~~~
tkahn6
> \- note the lack of front-page coverage of this story in the New York Times

1\. As of right now, the story is linked to on the front page in the Opinion
box since this is an opinion piece and not a news piece. If you want opinion
as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or Upworthy.

2\. The story of the NSA surveillance was front page on the NY Times when it
broke and for about a week or two after.

3\. The Mainstream media has been reporting on this consistently, both on the
Snowden drama and the actual substance of his leaks.

It's sad to see _both_ longer-time and newer users running around with this
chicken little reddit-level bullshit. The mods seem to be complicit in it so
oh well. The upside is that I waste less time here.

~~~
ferdo
> If you want opinion as news, I refer you to Fox News or Buzzfeed or
> Upworthy.

All "news" is someone's, or a group of someones, opinion. There's no such
thing as objective journalism.

> chicken little reddit-level bullshit

It's only been a couple of weeks since people became aware that the largest
spy agency in the world is spying on pretty much anything they can get a bead
on.

Perhaps cutting people some slack until 24/7 surveillance becomes the New
Normal might be in order?

~~~
hobs
In my opinion, there is about a 30 minute wait on the I9, and now in sports
news, in my opinion the raiders beat the muskrats last night.... etc.

There is definitely such a thing as reporting the facts, and just because
there are levels of opinion doesn't mean that all outlets of journalism are
somehow comparable. Fox News != Anyone with credibility.

~~~
Volpe
Yes, but even the choice of facts expresses an opinion.

I could report how many murders were caused by black people, how many
robberies by mexicans, and how much drugs by asians, Then how many illegal
immigrants entered the country this month.

All fact, no opinion?

~~~
tkahn6
He anticipated this point and explicitly acknowledged there are levels of
opinion.

------
fragsworth
The blowback from this mess could very soon be more severe than everyone might
think. I expect several foreign countries to ban American tech company
operations in their jurisdictions.

The bans in the foreign nations could easily stem from foreign business owners
pressuring their politicians to ban American-operated companies under the
guise of national security, privacy, and anti-American-power-mongering, but
their real motivation will be to gain market share. Their politicians can
easily make it into a win-win for everyone involved - the politicians
(campaign contributions), the local businesses (market share), and the
population, who wouldn't mind seeing a global anti-America movement.

~~~
rustynails
Thou doth jest. Most western countries are lap-dogs to the US, and almost
certainly exchange spying data with the US so that they don't breach their own
privacy laws. This will have little impact with US allies.

~~~
icebraining
Even if the intelligence governmental agencies exchange that in the US (and
many certainly do), that doesn't mean they can't impose rules on businesses
(expanding the privacy laws you mention) and other state entities to avoid
using US tech services.

Sure it'd be hypocritical, but when did that stop anyone?

~~~
vidarh
Especially because there's been past concerns about US intelligence passing
sensitive data to US companies to help them win contracts.

There's bound to be a lot of high level execs at European companies whispering
in their governments ears at the moment about how this is putting them at a
substantial disadvantage, whether or not they believe it to be true.

------
janlukacs
Please talk to people who lived under oppresive regimes (former Eastern Block)
and see for yourself what it meant to live in a society of paranoia,
snitching, informants, secret service, fake patriotism etc.. embedded IN every
aspect of social life (work, neighbours EVEN families).

Americans can't grasp this because they never experienced it, that's why you
need to talk to people who did, otherwise your children will be sorry.

------
andrewljohnson
Is it possible for Americans to file a class action suit over a top secret
government surveillance program? I feel like we all have standing at least.

~~~
anigbrowl
The courts would rightly reject it as a political matter.

~~~
dllthomas
When I object to the government breaking the law against me, it's not "a
political matter" \- indeed, usually the courts are the appropriate venue.

~~~
anigbrowl
You're not in a position to make that determination, and the judicial branch
has traditionally taken a different view of this from yours. The question was
whether people could sue, not whether they should be able to.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_question](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_question)

~~~
andrewljohnson
How are you construing an unconstitutional surveillance program as a political
question?

I don't see how any of the Court Cases listed on the wikipedia article are
relevant. These all seem to relate to truly political things, like which
branch has what authority, or how districts are apportioned. The article only
cites 5 areas the courts have clear precedent on - wars, treaties,
gerrymandering, impeachment, as well as the Guarantee clause. The Guarantee
clause relates to Article 4 though, not Amendment 4.

If we are construing this NSA wire-tapping as a war power, then we're in
trouble, because we have now effectively agreed the written words of the
Patriot Act have no meaning, and the constitution will never be applied
uniformly to the executive.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not all that sure it is unconstitutional, for one thing - aren't you
begging the question here? And on a more general level, shouldn't you be
considering precedent on justiciability, rather than basing your whole
argument on your personal opinion of the waht the constitution means?

I might note in asssing that I favor a constitutional amendment that would
create an explicit right to privacy; I'm not in favor of a surveillance state.
But that doesn't alter my skepticism about how a class action lawsuit would
actually fare in the courts.

~~~
freehunter
>I'm not all that sure it is unconstitutional

And you know who the perfect people to decide that would be? Judges. In a
court of law. Since that's one of their main job functions.

~~~
anigbrowl
As I have pointed out numerous times over the last few weeks, my belief is
that they made that determination in 1979, in _Smith v Maryland_.

------
e3pi
"...The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law."

"We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we
know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language,
intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable
investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of
the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s
time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal."

Fatal bug throughout the whole `stack'?

Are these lawyered authors actually telling us the rudder is gone and the
entire hull rotten?

~~~
mpyne
The whole thing as implemented now definitely needs better accountability and
oversight to call it a program that befits the public service. But I don't
know about the rudder being gone (or what you mean by that exactly).

~~~
e3pi
Well gudgeon-ed and pintel-ed teak rudder:

Respect for civilization's eye's covered verdigris bronze lady holding up
scales.

------
mpyne
"Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications
from Internet companies." OK, good so far, PRISM does indeed streamline and
automate the process...

"... Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of
e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between
Americans."

??? PRISM was the one thing I stopped being worried about as soon as I figured
out what it was. The government has always been able to subpoena a third-party
for records pursuant to an actual investigation, and even Google seemed to be
satisfied with the idea that specific PRISM requests have been legal (even if
they forced NSA to get a real warrant first).

 _Other_ things may indicate NSA is hoovering emails like a Mob boss hoovering
blow but PRISM isn't one of them. PRISM has to be turned on to acquire data,
unlike other NSA SIGINT this one's not actually magic.

I'm kind of disappointed by the opinion piece because if they only took
efforts to be factual they would probably be able to make a much more
persuasive case (e.g. by bringing up Carnivore or 641A-style data interception
instead of a system that queries specific individual users one-at-a-time).

~~~
dram
So from Wikipedia, Boundless Informant uses 504 separate DNR (electronic
surveillance program records) and DNI (metadata) collection sources known as
SIGADs. In a 30-day period, they collected 3 billion data elements from within
the US from these SIGADS.

And the PRISM document says it is the "the number one source of raw
intelligence used for NSA analytic reports". Doesn't that mean that PRISM is
the majority source of those 3 billion data elements?

And why did Page, Zuckerberg and Apple say they never heard of PRISM? Perhaps
I am wrong but it's somewhat confusing!

~~~
mpyne
If 2.999 billion elements never make it into those analytic reports then it
may very well be possible that of the remainder that manual systems like PRISM
end up being the majority source. As you note, there are hundreds of SIGADs,
of which PRISM is just one.

> And why did Page, Zuckerberg and Apple say they never heard of PRISM?

Because PRISM is the name for the NSA end of that service and associated data
tools. The company end of that service would be whatever they called the
system they use for FISA warrant/NSL compliance.

------
logn
It's criminal and people should go to prison. When we talk about locking
people up forever because they're a threat to society, I can't think of a
better example than this.

~~~
rhizome
Take a gander at David Addington:

[http://froomkin.tumblr.com/post/54026897885](http://froomkin.tumblr.com/post/54026897885)

------
w_t_payne
Yes, it _is_ time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they
are: Both criminal - and a betrayal of the people of the United States of
America.

------
tehwalrus
This post makes a similar argument to my blog post[1] from earlier this week -
that PRISM is simply criminal - although my analysis focused on why this made
Snowden immune to charges as a whistleblower.

I agree that it's time to take the US government to task over this. How does
that happen? A civil suit, a private prosecution?

[1] [http://joe-jordan.co.uk/blog/2013/06/tinker-tailor-
whistlebl...](http://joe-jordan.co.uk/blog/2013/06/tinker-tailor-
whistleblower-spy-Snowden-PRISM/) (hacker news comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5945185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5945185)
)

------
whiddershins
Well said.

