ACLU FIles Lawsuit over NSA Phone Surveillance
 

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-se...riot-act-phone

"In the wake of the past week's revelations about the NSA's unprecedented mass surveillance of phone calls, today the ACLU filed a lawsuit charging that the program violates Americans' constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy."

"Collecting those details—"metadata" that reveals who people talk to, for how long, how often, and possibly from where—allows the government to paint an alarmingly detailed picture of Americans' private lives. The FISC order cited Section 215 as its legal basis, yet the breadth of the authority it granted to the government is simply incompatible with the text of the statute."

"As an organization that advocates for and litigates to defend the civil liberties of society's most vulnerable, the staff at the ACLU naturally use the phone—a lot—to talk about sensitive and confidential topics with clients, legislators, whistleblowers, and ACLU members. And since the ACLU is a VBNS customer, we were immediately confronted with the harmful impact that such broad surveillance would have on our legal and advocacy work. So we're acting quickly to get into court to challenge the government's abuse of Section 215."

"The nature of the ACLU's work—in areas like access to reproductive services, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants, national security, and more—means that many of the people who call the ACLU wish to keep their contact with the organization confidential. Yet if the government is collecting a vast trove of ACLU phone records—and it has reportedly been doing so for as long as seven years—many people may reasonably think twice before communicating with us."

The ACLU is just going through the formalties.

Anyone with basic sense knows that this as been going on for years and there is no practical way this can be prevented. Intelligence has to be gathered one way or another, and intelligence systems transcend governments.

Rand Paul was talking about filing a class action lawsuit in the Supreme Court against Obama Administration last week.
Isn't the House & Senate that pass the laws and the administration executes them?

Good for the ACLU. Someone needs to step forward and challenge the ever-increasing surveillance state and they have standing to do so (they're a Verizon customer). There's a reasonable chance they'll lose the case, but at least we'll know where these NSA programs stand from a legal POV.

Just shown a poll on CNN this morning where 65% are OK with the monitoring as long as it keeps us safe!

Little by little our personal behaviors and every move have been tracked. Marketers and venders do it, we accept it because told it lowers costs! The internet providers say they only want to tailor our experience and ease of operation. Your TV provider does it too for another good reason I'm sure.

We accept that it seems gladly, without a thought of how it is really used. Does anyone think for a minute the Government built spy center in Utah is going away?





Barney

With all the fear that our political class tries to instill in us, there's no surprise with the results of this poll.

An idea put forward yesterday makes sense to me. The government should allow them to share with their customers within their terms of service the nature of the information that they routinely share with government. Clapper's lies to Ron Wyden during testimony in March shows pretty clearly that Congressional oversight doesn't work. How can Congress perform oversight without information?

The thing is even if we knew the phone companies were complying in the terms. What real choice do we have, have a phone, internet or not! No opt out button ......

I'm afraid the current three branches, no four of government are all for it and will allow it to continue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_..._of_government

Barney

If the full and exact nature of NSA domestic data collection were known, at least it could be debated in public whether or not it goes too far. Also, if one Internet or phone company simply refused to comply with the government's requests and thereby greatly increased market share due to public demand, things would change.

But is it not the law for them to comply?




Barney

The law says that they must provide information in accordance with FISA court requests. It does not compel them to cooperate by opening up a back door to all data. They trouble seems to be that the FISA courts are extremely compliant and agree with data requests 99.97% of the time. I'm not sure if that constitutes judicial oversight (more like a rubber stamp, it seems).

...(T)he FISC has declined just 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance requests made by the government in 33 years, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. That's a rate of .03 percent, which raises questions about just how much judicial oversight is actually being provided.

"The FISA system is broken," Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the Journal. "At the point that a FISA judge can compel the disclosure of millions of phone records of US citizens engaged in only domestic communications, unrelated to the collection of foreign intelligence…there is no longer meaningful judicial review."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013...reject-request

Um...I don't think that you take legal action against the Federal Government as a "formality".

The choice we have is to hold our government accountable to the constitution: something that many folks don't believe that they have the power to do anymore. The NSA listening program started as an effort to track overseas calls inbound to the US, if memory serves. It has morphed into something odious.

I'm all for fighting terror. I'm not at all convinced that the war on terror needs to be fought at the expense of our civil rights. I don't think the government gets to vacuum up records of everyone's foreign AND DOMESTIC phone calls, store them in a database, and God knows what else. The opportunity for mischief-making here is truly boundless, and that appears to be what the ACLU is pushing back about.

ACLU is doing what it is expected to do since the spy subject is in the news.


The entire matter is just noise: The intelligence community will get whatever it wants.
Anyone expecting privacy in this "WORLD WIDE WEB" is naive.

Fixed that for you....

Whellie is a card carrying member of the ACLU?:eek: Strange bedfellows indeed!

The debate on this issue is amusing.
The same conservatives that are crying foul now are the very ones that supported Bush's illegal wiretapping fiasco.

😜

Similarly, some Dem's that criticized Dubya are circling the wagons for Obama. In either instance, we're working with incomplete information (and the government want it to stay that way).

Yes, of course. Both sides of the aisle are very familiar with hypocrisy.

Once again, the public is made aware of what it's government is up to and.......................

Meh. Pass the popcorn.

Dave

Care to take a guess at the size of such a database? Because in my experience there is not a storage media big enough.

I think it's become confusing to politicians on both sides of the aisle what stance to take. (In order to bouy their own popularity.) Some may genuinely want to protect the constitution, but are afraid they'll be painted as "soft on terrorism", but, then they'll be painted as supporting "Big Brother"......."Uh, oh, I dunno which way to go!"

My guess is the lawsuits will fly for a while, the hearings will continue, there will be much hullabaloo spouted about, then some legislation or "pledge" will appear..........But, behind the scenes, nothing really changes.

Dave

I bet you're right Dave.

FYI, they built a computer large enough to simulate a nuclear explosion back in Clintons' day.

Pete

I doubt it, too. IIRC the phone company details my phone usage for 90 days. Every outgoing call with duration of said call for billing purposes. Whether they can zip/compress the data for is something better left to someone more knowledgable than I about the subject.

What is the data storage/ processing capabilties of those Cray supercomputers that the gubmint is the sole customer for?http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/ima...s/paranoid.gif

Just asking that question probably landed me and the rest of us here at PoliticalChat on someone's desk, underground at Ft. Meade...:rolleyes:

And the Patriot Act bears GW Bushs signature.

If we were to halt the NSA from gathering this information, then suffer another 9/11-like event in say, two or three years, I wonder how many of these short-sighted people posting "Obama is Listening" crap all over my FB page would be demanding to know why "Obama" didn't detect it and stop it, before it happened?

My guess is;

Every last one of them.

It's because they are stupid and blinded by their distaste for a single man, Pete.

Dave

It is not the ability and store the gathered data I would question, but the ability to decipher any useful information and deter terrorist acts. More gatherers than hunters?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...y.html?hpid=z1
If this guy can be believed? Maybe dozens...

I'm with you.

What's wrong with holding, or trying to hold the government responsible for it's actions?

The down trodden needs to reach up every so often and grab a handful of short hairs.

Chas

I'd say this fellow has about as much credibility as James Clapper, the fellow who said that we collect no data on Americans (until Snowden showed otherwise). As someone who worked in 3 Federal agencies over 38 years, I know that higher level exec's/managers will do nearly anything to protect their turf, budget and reputation. Lying to Congress and the American people is the least of it.

Even the two specific examples he cited have been shown to be more the results of normal police work and not some whiz-bang NSA bullshit.

Who would those be Barb?

This conservative never supported vacuuming up phone records for domestic calls. So, if you're referring to me, please show me a post where I supported this.

Feeling a bit defensive there, Whell?
😉

I don't recall pointing the finger specifically at anyone person.

Ain't too many "conservatives" in this thread, and the one that's here started this thread.

The way I took it was that you meant the parade of idjits in the House & Senate and maybe the talking heads over at Faux news.

Rand Paul has been running his mouth all over the place but then I have trouble differentiating between the garden variety seditious tea sippers and conservatives these days.:rolleyes:

And then there is the latest; http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/12/politics/nsa-leak

The U.S. government spies on other countries, even Communist countries? Wow, there's a newsflash.

This guy is going down. Something tells me whether it's a Dem or a Rep makes no difference. They are gonna stick this pig one way or another. The original leak was one thing, this is entirely different. Look for Snowden to get charged with treason, folks.

Dave

Give'em a good yank Chas!

Big exception though. When Bush signed the Patriot Act into law (with a sunset provision) the left screamed bloody murder. Remember this?

'If we do [insert government surveillance program] Al Qaeda has won!'

Pete

That should hold about two, maybe three days of all telephone calls here in the USA, ignoring the foreign ones. Hardly sufficient to develop a pattern.

If you believe the NSA and the news stories, they're not retaining voice files with this particular effort. They're only grabbing the metadata. Seems that size of storage would be plenty sufficient.

Oh I believe that is all they are keeping, it just seems the media and the hoi poloi believe they are recording everything. Guess some are worried that their wives might find out about those sites they browse.:p

Yeah, so? In case you haven't noticed some of them are screamimg bloody murder now, and some Republicans are defending the NSA. The Turtle mentioned something about "treason" in regards to Snowden, recently.
And, I happen to agree with him, in light of the most recent developments, BTW.

Dave

Yup, there's no way they are recording every conversation. Now, if someone happens to be talking to a suspected jihadist or a ginned up teabagger bent on sedition and the violent overthrow of the government, I hope they are recording them and also preparing a case and a cell for them in one of those supermax prisons, once they cross the line into criminal conspiracy.