

First US appeals court hears argument to shut down NSA database - ixtli
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/first-us-appeals-court-hears-argument-to-shut-down-nsa-database/

======
freakonom
This is a Free Speech Cage [1] with suits.

Straight from the history books, it's one of the last phases of the plan that
goes like this:

1) leverage an extraordinary event to scare everyone into supporting emergency
measures

2) perpetuate fear and argument on all sides to distract, divide, and conquer
public opinion, raising the possibility that these emergency powers might be
(necessary|good|here to stay)

3) put on the suits and officially vent dissent to devnull ( _you are here_ )

4) everyone gives up and you can peel off the emergency sticker, pointing to
your new law as precedent and tradition to uphold

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone)

~~~
alexjeffrey
I know I'm going to get called on Godwin's law and/or hyperbole for this one,
but this is the exact route Hitler took (using the Reichstag fire) to escalate
his authority from Chancellor to Fuhrer.

[edit]

to clarify, the reason I made this comment is to note a case where this
strategy has been used in history, as mentioned by the parent post. Not to
compare Obama/Bush to Hitler.

~~~
adamors
Not just Hitler. Naomi Klein (of No Logo fame) wrote an excellent book about
it, called The Shock Doctrine [1]. She lists numerous examples in the last 50
or so years how convenient, but shocking events were used as excuses to
implement controversial laws, that often either limited freedoms or made the
life of people more miserable.

She mostly approaches the issues from an economical perspective, mainly
focusing on inhumane economic policies that both Thatcher and Reagan
implemented, but the gist is similar.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine)

~~~
hackuser
Generally Congress does not act until there is an overwhelming impetus to push
them over the threshold: They have limited time to deal with the whole
nation's and world's problems; and they are responsive to a body, the public,
which is uninformed, has a short attention span, and is highly reactive and
rarely proactive.

Therefore it is not surprising that shocking events lead to controversial
laws. Shocking events arguably lead to most laws; it's hard to get something
done unless something shocking gets the public's (and members of congress')
attention and causes a reaction.

Of course, people in power are aware of this phenomenon and plan their tactics
to take advantage of it. I remember reading that many provisions of the
Patriot Act were written long before 9/11 and its authors had been awaiting an
opportunity. Or as the Obama administration said early in its tenure (IIRC),
'never waste a crisis'.

------
ep103
What's amazing is that the arguments they're using are already out of date.
The argument that these records are only being used for anti-terrorism
purposes was shot down by the revelation of the NSA's "google-like interface"
a week or so ago. It'd be great if someone could get that message to the
lawyer.

~~~
lern_too_spel
How does an interface negate how it's claimed to be used? If the FBI has a
Google-like interface on their database of felons, how would that mean it's
not used for law enforcement?

~~~
xnull
The interface doesn't.

However for posterity it's clear that the NSA is not about terrorism:

* The Inspector General Report on the Boston Bombings and the US's failure to discover them do not talk about the NSA (except to mention it in passing just two times). "We focused our review on the entities that were the most likely to have had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the bombings – the FBI, the CIA, DHS, and NCTC, which maintains the U.S. government’s database of classified identifying and substantive derogatory information on known or suspected terrorists."

* The NSA's mission statement itself is "The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Information Assurance (IA) products and services, and enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances."

* The NSA's actions regarding the Natanz nuclear processing facility, capturing data from German officials during the Eurozone crisis, of off shore oil drilling bids from Brazilian PETROBOL, programs such as HACIENTA that specifically target countries, blatant references to political and financial targets, etc

* Programs such as QUEEN, ORCHESTRA, MINERVA, BIRDSONG/BADGER/GATEWAY/SLIPSTREAM, JTRIG, literature and research on social contagions and PsyOps (related to recent recent USAID Cuban Twitter project and Lincoln Group)

Together these tell us that the NSA is an arm of us finance, espionage,
sabotage and influence/propoganda targeting political upheaval in target
nations.

~~~
lern_too_spel
How does the existence of other programs tell you how the phone records are
used? You're making the same mistake as the great-grandparent in a slightly
different way.

~~~
xnull
I see your point, but my argument does not actually hinge on the existence of
other programs. It's multifaceted and draws from sources outside of the leaks
as well, including the mission statement of the NSA. If you look into the
nature of how the NSA uses the phone information you'll find that it is used
for political and espionage purposes. None of the programs exist in isolation
- they all hang together. An example of this is the NSA's program to discover
company hierarchy structure from phone metadata - which is used among other
things to find targets that give the NSA leverage into and/or access to the
parts of a company they want to infiltrate. Finally, Merkle and other
political leaders _were_ (are) part of the phone metadata program.

[http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-
metada...](http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-
find-paul-revere/)

If you want to know what the FBI does with guns, you can't just inspect what
their guns are capable of. You have to look at their mission statement, their
actions, their other technological investments, reviews and investigations of
the FBI, etc.

The NSA works with bureaus that handle domestic terrorism. They provide some
small tools and data for that. Some selectors and social analysis of phone
metadata are surely part of that. But if you look at what the NSA does, what
their capabilities are, what their mission is and objectives are, and reports
about their internal posture and attitudes you quickly learn that their
programs are not broadly about counter-terrorism, although sometimes they
partner for these purposes.

------
blueking
What a complete load of bullshit for the cameras.

This is theater. They have absolutely no intention of ever shutting down the
NSA, or restricting them, or deleting one single file in their database... the
one that's so huge they had to put it in the desert.

[http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/sites/default/files/Greenp...](http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/sites/default/files/Greenpeace_utah_airship_flight%201137.jpg)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The location in Utah is between the state's two largest population centers.
That picture looks back into a live-ammunition range for the Army reserves and
up into mountains that are pretty much owned by a mining company (so no
developments), but that doesn't reflect the reality around it. The location
wasn't chosen for the space (sure, it's big, but there is a _lot_ of federal
ground around the US); it was chosen because of cheap, plentiful electricity
and good connectivity to the Internet.

If it's any consolation, there have been efforts underway to get the water
rights for the NSA's Utah DC revoked[1]. Personally, I think it is deplorable
that they built a data center that will use nearly two million gallons of
water a day in one of the driest places in the US. It irks me every time I
look across the valley and see it.

1\. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/utah-
lawmaker-n...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/utah-lawmaker-nsa-
data-centre-water-supply)

2\. [http://fox13now.com/2014/04/25/bluffdale-releases-water-
bill...](http://fox13now.com/2014/04/25/bluffdale-releases-water-bill-for-nsa-
data-center/)

~~~
fizgig
I'm curious if the NSA data center and Google Fiber being planned for Provo,
UT (of all the wasted places...) is coincidental.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Google already explained why they chose Provo. The infrastructure is already
mostly in place, and they can get it cheaply. [http://www.provo.org/about-
us/current-issues/google-fiber](http://www.provo.org/about-us/current-
issues/google-fiber)

Others in this thread have already explained why the NSA might build a data
center in Utah.

------
vegasbrianc
When the NSA claims the the Database is deleted. How are we really to know
anyway?

~~~
spacefight
You don't. That beast is not accountable, and as long as it exists.

