
NSA deleted surveillance data it pledged to preserve - tonyztan
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/19/nsa-deletes-surveillance-data-351730
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ibeckermayer
Would anybody else vote on this one issue? Any candidate who said flat out
"your government is spying on you through giant corporations and they're all
lying about it, and I'm going to Washington to put a stop to it" would have my
vote.

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astronautjones
It's coming. not in the 2018 elections, but the 2020 democrat party will be
forced from below and unpredictable other sides to be far more leftist and
treat privacy as a crucial issue

~~~
boomboomsubban
Personally, I find it more likely that the NSA or another organization ends up
leaking some sort of damning info about Trump. This would give them a huge
opinion boost, and the Democrats would end up owing the organization for their
victory. We're already seeing this, the Democrats seem to love Comey despite
his role in mass surveillance.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> huge opinion boost

You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability
to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been
spying on the president?

You don't think that would make them look like they were illegally meddling in
partisan politics?

~~~
boomboomsubban
>You think people would warm to the NSA if only they demonstrated an inability
to keep secret the findings of their domestic spying, and revealed they'd been
spying on the president?

They may not need to make it domestic or seem like they were spying on the
president, finding some sort of scandal involving a different nation doesn't
seem that hard. Or they could use some intercepted knowledge from a foreign
spy agency.

As a whole though, I suspect they'd see an opinion boost even if it came from
domestic surveillance. The hatred of Trump is ridiculous, Democrats have even
praised Bush following his attacks on Trump. Plus, Mark Felt did basically did
this and just got had a movie made about him.

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rayiner
So in litigation, when one side destroys evidence, you can ask the court to
draw an adverse inference about what the evidence would have contained. That
seems like it would be appropriate here.

~~~
olfactory
It certainly would, though I think in this case the evidence was destroyed to
protect officials from going to prison over surveillance excesses.

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mtgx
NSA "oversight" is a complete joke, especially with Senate Intelligence
Committee members like Feinstein cheerleading for more surveillance.

How is anyone ever going to rein in on NSA or find out what they're really up
to if they come up with excuses like this one and then they're just let off
the hook?

Stuff like this is also why I can't take seriously any pro-surveillance
argument, because clearly the NSA is very non-serious about it, too.

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StanislavPetrov
Direct violation of a court order, and yet another piece of evidence that our
police-state overseers are above the law.

~~~
UncleEntity
The lawmakers are by definition "above the law" since they can retroactively
make their actions legal.

~~~
justsid
The NSA is part of the executive branch. They don‘t make any laws.

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testvox
If they can't comply with this direct court order how are they going to ensure
compliance with the Constitution? The mass surveillance program is too
expansive to be responsibly controlled and should be shut down.

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andy_ppp
Hahaha, the NSA deleted data, of course.

~~~
danjoc
We don't collect that data about Americans.

is_deleted=false

Yes, it was deleted. We can't give it to you.

is_deleted=true

Even if it was actually deleted, it's still in the backups somewhere. Even if
it's not in the backups, the NSA SSD firmware copied it off to unused hidden
blocks. Even if it didn't, the NSA has tools to recover data, even after
multiple passes of file wiping.

Nobody ever deletes data anymore. They didn't physically destroy all devices
with a copy? They still have it.

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eritain
How nice! Usually their malfeasance goes the other way round.

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zachlatta
What a surprise.

