Edward Snowden Q&A

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by molson

There are alternatives in the other party who oppose NSA. Not a majority of them, but a significant number. Are there any Dems that would vote against their NSA-supporting Dem congressman and for a Republican that opposes it? Is this issue THAT important?

I'm sure there are some, but not enough to matter. I've never been a single issue voter, so as much as I'd prefer a revamp of the NSA, that alone won't change my vote.

[Desnudo]

Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be “Abolished”

[Desnudo]

Snowden revelations force Obama's hand on surveillance program - First Read

[flounder]

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

[Desnudo]

now we're getting somewhere. This is orginally what I figured the abuse would actually come from.

NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests - Washington Wire - WSJ

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

now we're getting somewhere. This is orginally what I figured the abuse would actually come from.

NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests - Washington Wire - WSJ

This Means War and True Lies were much more realistic than we expected then

[sterlingice]

This is our dumping ground for NSA revelations, right?

Report: NSA collecting millions of contact lists - Yahoo News

{sarcasm}Shockingly{/sarcasm}, they're grabbing citizens' contact lists while they are abroad.

On the one hand, it's fairly obvious what's going on with this particular set of data:
Using Metadata to find Paul Revere - Kieran Healy
They're trying to use networking algorithms to find potential terrorists. On the other hand, they're spying on citizens to do it. (However, one of the takeaways of the Paul Revere story that escaped notice is how close his scores were to many other "conspirators" who were not nearly as famous and the only reason this got notice was because of a Longfellow poem meeting the happy coincidence of a networking algorithm. There are probably a lot of innocent people in that net, too)

SI

[sterlingice]

More fun:
U.S. justices reject call to review intelligence court action on phone records - Yahoo News

Originally Posted by story

The Obama administration argued in papers presented to the court that under existing law, only the government or Verizon itself could challenge a ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

So, only the government doing the spying or the company coerced into doing the spying can challenge the ruling of the court.

SI

[molson]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

So, only the government doing the spying or the company coerced into doing the spying can challenge the ruling of the court.

SI

Not necessarily, that's certainly the U.S. government's argument, but someone could theoretically establish standing in some other way, and the Court's decision not to entertain this particular case doesn't establish any precedent. They just decided not to hear it, as is the case with the huge majority of cases that get referred to it.