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[palsch]

A very worthwhile piece.

It's by an ex-ACLU civil liberties lawyer - who for five years (2001-6) had was the National Security Policy Counsel for their legal arm and worked directly on their responses to counter-terrorism legislation in that period) who was then pulled into the intelligence system to design the oversight systems. He worked from 2006 in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence then from 2009 to 2010 as the first Director for Privacy and Civil Liberties in the White House Cybersecurity Office.

The heart of his argument;

President Obama should go further, wresting control from the leakers and restoring trust with the public. He should ask Mr. Clapper to look across the intelligence community and disclose to the public the types of large databases it collects in bulk, under what legal powers or interpretations, and pursuant to what safeguards to protect Americans' privacy—while keeping necessary details secret.

Many aspects of surveillance must remain secret. For example, the government should never provide a list of companies from which it acquires big data sets. Despite what Americans see in the movies, the NSA doesn't actually collect everything. Knowing which companies are included and which are not would tip off terrorists about how to avoid detection—telling them which providers to use and which to avoid. Likewise, the government will never be able to confirm or deny whether particular people are under surveillance, but it should avoid the temptation to use this necessary secrecy to avoid meeting legal challenges to its activities. The government has good arguments for why its programs are both vital for national security and perfectly constitutional. It should make them.

The intelligence community has already taken significant steps in this direction. Mr. Clapper has declassified FISA court orders and congressional oversight reports. His lawyer, Bob Litt, has detailed the legal reasoning and privacy safeguards behind bulk collection. The intelligence community's civil-liberties officer, Alex Joel, has successfully pushed for transparency about the kinds of big financial and border databases that civilian agencies share with the intelligence community. Similarly, the FISA court is pushing back on excessive secrecy, hardly in keeping with the accusation that it is a rubber stamp.

Openness is a value in itself, but it is also a necessary precondition to the effective functioning of our three branches of government. President Obama has called for a "national conversation" about "the general problem of data, these big data sets" and their implications for privacy. A Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, recommended by the 9/11 Commission but moribund for years, is back in business, just in time to lead it. A national conversation will be meaningful only if a new policy of openness continues and deepens. It is long overdue.

[Baffler]

-snip-

This. So much this.

[Scoops Novel]

Because improvement is possible.

I've seen some mention (on the same TOR talk, goddamn it where do you find that stuff) of the response being changing the way the internet and it's associated infrastructure works. I do not give the promises governments make about what they will and wont survey the time of day so long as the capability is there, and whether it's possible to in-place such a change is the discussion I'd like to have.

[SalmonGod]

Similarly, the FISA court is pushing back on excessive secrecy, hardly in keeping with the accusation that it is a rubber stamp.

Before I can believe that, I'll need some kind of explanation for almost total lack of FISA applications rejected ever (11 total out of 33,949), even as the volume tripled or quadrupled over the past decade as compared to the previous two, and all of a sudden began turning its attentions inwards on the U.S. population by the tens of thousands.  That kind of data needs to be explained, and every official statement so far has done nothing but pretend that such data doesn't exist.

[Mrhappyface]

Most likely, tool and resource sharing between various organizations. Both domestic and overseas.

[palsch]

Before I can believe that, I'll need some kind of explanation for almost total lack of FISA applications rejected ever (11 total out of 33,949), even as the volume tripled or quadrupled over the past decade as compared to the previous two, and all of a sudden began turning its attentions inwards on the U.S. population by the tens of thousands.  That kind of data needs to be explained, and every official statement so far has done nothing but pretend that such data doesn't exist.

Just because the FISC is pushing back in the way he said doesn't mean it would likely reject applications. Given the structure of the whole FISA system (including the courts and lawyers who act as prosecutors and gatekeepers for each application) having any rejections would be surprising.

Remember that the FISA system isn't adversarial. That is, there aren't two sides to each claim. The state simply puts forwards its case for why they should be allowed to do something. The court makes sure the case meets the standards of what is allowed and says go ahead. Because, in 99% of cases, what is and isn't allowed is clear and well known - and with experienced NSA lawyers doing the same checks that the judge would - cases that the court would reject never make it to the judge.

There are those remaining cases where there are novel questions and it isn't entirely clear how the court should rule. These are the areas he seems to be talking about there being pushback. The ruling that was declassified the other day adds restrictions (apparently proposed by the NSA themselves) on how they can use information that there is no clear federal (civilian) court restriction on using. It's also these hard cases that that proposal the other day suggested adding an adversarial element to the court, with designated defence lawyers assigned to challenge such applications and keep the system honest.

[Another]

Nice presentation of the NSA position on secret warrants issued by secret courts.

What about the lying to the Congress while under oath?

[palsch]

From the above article;

The nation's intelligence chief, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is struggling with how to restore trust. Mr. Clapper briefed Congress on the phone-records program but has since apologized for his public testimony in March denying that the NSA has the records of millions of Americans. The testimony, he has said, was "the least untruthful statement" he could have made in public about a bulk data-collection program that officials in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations unwisely chose to keep secret. Mr. Clapper and his successors should not be put in that position again.

In short, he couldn't honestly testify without revealing classified information, basically doing what Snowden did only in front of Congress and as a senior official. Greater transparency - if only about the general nature and safeguards surrounding the system - would have made such lies unneeded.

There are those who would hold that even revealing the types of data collected makes the program far less useful, allowing those in the know to avoid being tracked by it. That's the view that seems to have held sway since 2006/7.

[Sheb]

It's good that they're finally opening up somewhat. Snwoden already did a lot of good.

[Evil Knievel]

TOR talk

It was linked on a newspaper that made an article about it (non-English) and thus a singular find. I guess it is in the nature of things that you can't find material like that from a centralized place. Sorry

[Scoops Novel]

TOR talk

It was linked on a newspaper that made an article about it (non-English) and thus a singular find. I guess it is in the nature of things that you can't find material like that from a centralized place. Sorry

Thanks. I'll make sure to pay attention to them from now on. You know, i hadn't considered the degree to which smaller countries could be fucked over by all this until that talk. I'm not sure about the bigger ones, while everyone's friendly at least.

[Morrigi]

Has anyone brought up the fact that there is no evidence coming from outside the NSA showing that this spying is actually effective? Have a link.

http://www.businessinsider.com/wyden-and-udall-dont-believe-intelligence-officials-2013-7

With that in mind, this entire program and everything connected to it is inexcusable and a direct attack on the rights and liberties of the American people. The creation of secret courts that have just as much power as the Supreme Court and their illegal rulings interpreting the Constitution (something that even the Supreme Court has no official authority to do) is an insane and outrageous act by any standards short of those of a dictatorship.

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
 - Thomas Jefferson


Point is, the NSA bullshit is not alone in depriving us of our liberty and Constitutional rights. There were the 2012 and 2013 NDAA's, there is the constant push to restrict firearm access after every publicized mass shooting entirely out of context and in wilful ignorance of actual homicide rates, current firearm laws, history, and the properties of firearms themselves. There is the constant militarization of the police force, in progress since the late 1990's. There are the airport scanners, which are by many accounts less effective than standard metal detectors when it comes to metal objects.

The problem is not the recent actions of the NSA. That is but a drop in the bucket, and history shows this to be far from an isolated phenomenon.

"Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all."
 - Maximilien de Robespierre

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."
 - Plato

"To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body."
 - Mahatma Gandhi 

[Another]

When a person argues that he broke one law because otherwise he would have to break a different law - he is still guilty of breaking a law and of his action or inaction that led him into that situation. Somehow that argument still allows Clapper to avoid criminal charges.

Are some laws (like the PATRIOT act and other espionage related ones, secret interpretations of Constitution) considered strictly more important than some other laws (Criminal Code, public interpretations of Constitution)?

[SalmonGod]

The very concept of a secret interpretation of a law is in itself pretty damn absurd.

"We wrote these rules that tell you what your rights are and what behaviors can get you punished, but as the organization responsible for guaranteeing those rights and punishing forbidden behaviors, we're not going to tell you what we think those rules actually mean."

Immediately followed, of course, by "ignorance of the law is no excuse"...

[alway]

The very concept of a secret interpretation of a law is in itself pretty damn absurd.

"We wrote these rules that tell you what your rights are and what behaviors can get you punished, but as the organization responsible for guaranteeing those rights and punishing forbidden behaviors, we're not going to tell you what we think those rules actually mean."

This. Especially because of the very established fact that, in the US, ignorance of the law is not considered an acceptable excuse for breaking them. Which, again, comes back to selective enforcement.

If you can make a law say whatever you want with no oversight, then apply that law with no further justification required, you become an authoritarian ruler. To the point where it is considered part of the definition of authoritarian governments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

Juan Linz, whose 1964 description of authoritarianism is influential,[6] characterized authoritarian regimes as political systems characterized by four qualities: (1) "limited, not responsible, political pluralism"; that is, constraints on political institutions and groups (such as legislatures, political parties, and interest groups), (2) a basis for legitimacy based on emotion, especially the identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat "easily recognizable societal problems" such as underdevelopment or insurgency; (3) neither "intensive nor extensive political mobilization" and constraints on the mass public (such as repressive tactics against opponents and a prohibition of antiregime activity) and (4) "formally ill-defined" executive power, often shifting or vague.[/quote