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RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 1:47:45 PM

tazzygirl

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wiretap n. using an electronic device to listen in on telephone lines, which is illegal unless allowed by court order based upon a showing by law enforcement of "probable cause" to believe the communications are part of criminal activities. Use of wiretap is also a wrongful act for which the party whose telephones were tapped may sue the party performing the act and/or listening in as an invasion of privacy or for theft of information. A wiretap differs from a "bug" which is a radio device secretly placed in one's premises to listen in on conversations or to tape incoming calls without notice to the caller. The same rules of illegality and tort liability apply to "bugging."

My understanding was there was no tapping... no one was "listening in".

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Post #: 21

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 1:52:07 PM

isoLadyOwner

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quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

"In July 2007, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case, ruling the plaintiffs in the case - which includes scholars, journalists, and national nonprofit organizations - had no standing to sue because they could not state with certainty that they have been wiretapped by the NSA."

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-v-nsa-challenge-illegal-spying

They have proof now they were wiretapped?

They now have a vastly better argument that their 1st Amendment Rights and 4th Amendment Rights have been violated by the Federal Government.

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Post #: 22

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 2:00:04 PM

tazzygirl

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Wouldnt they have to prove they were tapped first?

_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

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Post #: 23

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 2:07:13 PM

isoLadyOwner

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quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Wouldnt they have to prove they were tapped first?

They need to prove they had their privacy rights violated by the Federal Government.

Obama's surveillance is so all inclusive it is likely to have violated the Constitutional Rights of every person inside the United States who uses a telephone or the internet (certainly all Verizon customers).

(in reply to tazzygirl)

Post #: 24

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 2:08:06 PM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

I never supported Bush.

Damages and standing are legal terms. In 2006 and 2007 noone could state with certainty that they had been wiretapped.

Now millions of people as well as some organizations can show they have been wiretapped by the NSA and thus may now assert a violation of their Civil Liberties in Federal Court.

Without a Plaintiff with standing the Court can not hear the case on its merits.

In 2009, SCOTUS split 5-4 on whether to hear Amnesty v Clapper et al.

"In 2009, a judge in New York dismissed the suit on the grounds that the ACLU’s clients couldn’t prove that their communications would be monitored under the new law. A federal appeals court reversed that ruling in 2011 and the Obama administration appealed the issue to the Supreme Court, which heard oral argument in October 2012. In a 5-4 ruling handed down on February 26, 2013, the Supreme Court held the the ACLU plaintiffs don't have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the warrantless wiretapping program."

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/amnesty-et-al-v-clapper

Precisely what civil right was violated? Also what damages occurred from collection of metadata? Note that no wiretaps are involved in any of this.

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Post #: 25

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 2:10:34 PM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Wouldnt they have to prove they were tapped first?

They need to prove they had their privacy rights violated by the Federal Government.

Obama's surveillance is so all inclusive it is likely to have violated the Constitutional Rights of every person inside the United States who uses a telephone or the internet (certainly all Verizon customers).

Nonsense. The data the NSA collected is the exact same data every phone company uses to produce your phone bill. That data is routinely available to any law enforcement agency without a warrant.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

Post #: 26

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 2:18:38 PM

isoLadyOwner

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Wouldnt they have to prove they were tapped first?

They need to prove they had their privacy rights violated by the Federal Government.

Obama's surveillance is so all inclusive it is likely to have violated the Constitutional Rights of every person inside the United States who uses a telephone or the internet (certainly all Verizon customers).

Nonsense. The data the NSA collected is the exact same data every phone company uses to produce your phone bill. That data is routinely available to any law enforcement agency without a warrant.

Emails, credit card accounts, bank accounts, internet history; Obama is spying on these now as well.

Law Enforcement generally would review phone records with Reasonable Suspicion or Probable Cause in conjunction with a criminal investigation. They do not routinely review the records of ALL people in the USA.

Obama's statists (you don't deserve to be called liberals) will always make excuses for him but fewer and fewer people are buying the lies.

Read the Amendments to the Bill of Rights if you want to know what rights are being violated.

< Message edited by isoLadyOwner -- 6/12/2013 2:21:06 PM >

(in reply to DomKen)

Post #: 27

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 3:03:28 PM

tazzygirl

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quote:

Obama's surveillance is so all inclusive it is likely to have violated the Constitutional Rights of every person inside the United States who uses a telephone or the internet (certainly all Verizon customers).

Im not making excuses for him. I am trying to figure out on what basis this would have changed from the previous ruling.

The first case indicated that there were no damages that could be proven. I dont see how damages could be proven now.

I dont view what they did as wiretapping. Can you explain that part to me?

A day later, another leak pointed to a surveillance program known only as PRISM, which was funded by the NSA. A classified document in form of a PowerPoint deck, designed to train new operatives, was published online. Only four out of 41 slides were published in The Washington Post.

The slides indicated that AOL, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Google and YouTube, Microsoft and Skype, and little-known company PalTalk were involved in some way. The slides described how these companies were "current providers" but did not explicitly state that these firms knowingly or directly handed over data to the intelligence agency.

Anyone using PalTalk may wanna rethink that.

One by one, nearly all of the named companies denied knowledge of either knowing about PRISM, or providing any government agency user content, data or information without a court order or a search warrant.

But during that time, almost everyone forgot about Verizon. It's the cellular and wireline giant that makes the whole thing come together.

Ok.. this I get.

Section 702 of FISA effectively says the U.S. Justice Dept. must show that its proposed snooping will not intentionally target U.S. residents or U.S. citizens abroad, and it must comply with the Fourth Amendment. This recipient of an order served under Section 702 of FISA can in fact be appealed, but it has proven difficult based on a 2009 case [PDF], because there were "several layers of [...] safeguards."

That PDF leads to the following....

The FISC determined that the petitioner had standing to mount a challenge to the legality of the directives based on the Fourth Amendment rights of third-party customers. At first blush, this has a counter-intuitive ring: it is common ground that litigants ordinarily cannot bring suit to vindicate the rights of third parties. See, e.g., Hinck v. United States, 550 U.S. 501, 127 S.Ct. 2011, 2017 n. 3, 167 L.Ed.2d 888 (2007); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). But that prudential limitation may in particular cases be relaxed by congressional action. Warth,422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197; see Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 162, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997) (recognizing that Congress can “modif[y] or abrogat[e]” prudential standing requirements). Thus, if Congress, either expressly or by fair implication, cedes to a party a right to bring suit based on the legal rights or interests of others, that party has standing to sue; provided, however, that constitutional standing requirements are satisfied. See Warth, 422 U.S. at 500–01, 95 S.Ct. 2197. Those constitutional requirements are familiar; the suitor must plausibly allege that it has suffered an injury, which was caused by the defendant, and the effects of which can be redressed by the suit. See id. at 498–99, 95 S.Ct. 2197; N.H. Right to Life PAC v. Gardner, 99 F.3d 8,
13 (1st Cir.1996).

http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/In-re-Directives-Pursuant-to-Section-105b-of-the-Foreign-Intelligence-Surveillance-Act.pdf

The rest would be better if you just read it please.

The conclusion....

Our government is tasked with protecting an interest of utmost significance to the nation—the safety and security of its people. But the Constitution is the cornerstone of our freedoms, and government cannot unilaterally sacrifice constitutional rights on the altar of national security. Thus, in carrying out its national security mission, the government must simultaneously fulfill its constitutional responsibility to provide reasonable protections for the privacy of United States persons. The judiciary's duty is to hold that delicate balance steady and true

We believe that our decision to uphold the PAA as applied in this case comports with that solemn obligation. In that regard, we caution that our decision does not constitute an endorsement of broad-based, indiscriminate executive power. Rather, our decision recognizes that where the government has instituted several layers of serviceable safeguards to protect individuals against unwarranted harms and to minimize incidental intrusions, its efforts to protect national security should not be frustrated by the courts. This is such a case.

We need go no further. The decision granting the government's motion to compel is affirmed; the petition for review is denied and dismissed; and the motion for a stay is denied as moot.

So, back to the article....

That said, we still believe PRISM, as we suggest later, to be an application of sorts that sits on top of, or across a vast constantly updating data set. CNET's Declan McCullagh notes that PRISM also happens to be the acronym of an existing data processing tool, which has long been in common military use. PRISM stands for "Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management."

We do not know if the two are related or connected.

Because the slide says that analysts "should use both" the upstream data collection and PRISM collection, it does indicate that there may in fact be two methods of acquiring private user data.

And here's what we think. We believe the new slide published on Saturday does not alter what is in this article, which of course remains a hypothetical working theory.

However, based on this leaked material so far, we strongly suspect that the leaked PowerPoint slides are probably not written by technical people. It's likely that these slides were prepared as a internal marketing tool for new recruits. So, when the slides say: "direct access to servers," that statement may well be an oversimplification of the facts, and we, the media, are latching too much onto it.

http://www.zdnet.com/prism-heres-how-the-nsa-wiretapped-the-internet-7000016565/

Its a bit long winded. I trust you will read the full article and get back to me with the "jargon" and its implications. Its indeed technical, but I would love to understand this all better.

< Message edited by tazzygirl -- 6/12/2013 3:06:57 PM >

_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

Post #: 28

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 3:08:25 PM

DomKen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Wouldnt they have to prove they were tapped first?

They need to prove they had their privacy rights violated by the Federal Government.

Obama's surveillance is so all inclusive it is likely to have violated the Constitutional Rights of every person inside the United States who uses a telephone or the internet (certainly all Verizon customers).

Nonsense. The data the NSA collected is the exact same data every phone company uses to produce your phone bill. That data is routinely available to any law enforcement agency without a warrant.

Emails, credit card accounts, bank accounts, internet history; Obama is spying on these now as well.

Law Enforcement generally would review phone records with Reasonable Suspicion or Probable Cause in conjunction with a criminal investigation. They do not routinely review the records of ALL people in the USA.

Obama's statists (you don't deserve to be called liberals) will always make excuses for him but fewer and fewer people are buying the lies.

Read the Amendments to the Bill of Rights if you want to know what rights are being violated.

There are no amendments to the Bill of Rights.

You have absolutely no evidence that the NSA is doing anything more than collecting phone metadata and some usage data from some websites. Anything else would require warrants from the FISA court which would require a showing of probable cause. The judges on the FISA court are appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and at present 10 of the 11 were appointed by Republican Presidents.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

Post #: 29

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 3:26:13 PM

TheRockUHoldOnto

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GOD BLESS RAND PAUL Our next President!

(in reply to DomKen)

Post #: 30

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 3:31:41 PM

tazzygirl

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_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

(in reply to TheRockUHoldOnto)

Post #: 31

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 3:45:36 PM

isoLadyOwner

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The Bill of Rights are Amendments to the US Constitution (I mistyped).

Tazzygirl the issue of standing and damages revolves around the fact that noone could say that they were wrongfully spyed on back in 2006 (the program was secret).

If in 2006 Tazzygirl suspected Bush was spying on her and attempted to sue, the Court would have asked how she knew her right to privacy had been violated. Her damages are not monetary but rather they involve a violation of her Constitutional Rights, a violation which she could not be certain had occurred.

Obama has admitted that all Verizon customers have been monitored by the NSA. All Verizon customers now can point to a specific violation of their Civil Liberties.

There is now a "case and controversy" for the Court to hear it may decide US citizens have no right to privacy in these types of communications, however, it has not yet ruled on the merits of these programs.

In ACLU v NSA the Government initially lost, on Appeal the Case was tossed because the Plaintiff lacked standing (not really a ruling on the merits). In NSA v Clapper, the Case was thrown out because the Plaintiff lacked standing, SCOTUS denied cert 5-4 because the Plaintiff lacked standing.

The ACLU, as a Verizon customer, can now demonstrate that their communications were monitored by the Federal Government and is not apt to lose solely due to a lack of standing.

As far as the FISA Court there is noway of knowing that Probable Cause is really required for anything. I doubt there are any Constitutional safeguards being applied at all.

< Message edited by isoLadyOwner -- 6/12/2013 4:00:55 PM >

(in reply to tazzygirl)

Post #: 32

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 3:57:17 PM

tazzygirl

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Wouldnt the issue now revolve around the massive amount of data and how the plantiffs know they were among those singled out to be "monitored"?

Im not trying to be difficult here, and I have asked a techy friend to read the article from ZDNet. Im really trying to understand the implications here.

< Message edited by tazzygirl -- 6/12/2013 4:02:36 PM >

_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

Post #: 33

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 4:07:27 PM

isoLadyOwner

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quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Wouldnt the issue now revolve around the massive amount of data and how the plantiffs know they were among those singled out to be "monitored"?

They are in the class that is being monitored, they are a Verizon customer.

The Court generally requires this type of infringement on Civil Liberty to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling Government interest.

Its hard to see how Obama's taking millions and millions of people's records should be an excuse.

Obama took too many to review them all; where he probably shouldn't have taken any records without some sort of showing of Probable Cause or even Reasonable Suspicion.

(in reply to tazzygirl)

Post #: 34

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 4:14:54 PM

tazzygirl

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I keep coming back to the FISA Court. So 7 of the judges have been appointed since 2008. if the court order was approved, how does that indicate the administration (and it would seem Bush also had a bit of leniency here, so I am not sticking up for Obama) did anything wrong?

_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

Post #: 35

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 4:32:14 PM

isoLadyOwner

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quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

I keep coming back to the FISA Court. So 7 of the judges have been appointed since 2008. if the court order was approved, how does that indicate the administration (and it would seem Bush also had a bit of leniency here, so I am not sticking up for Obama) did anything wrong?

The Constitution trumps the Patriot Act if they conflict.

Obama and his predecessor were sworn to uphold the Constitution. The FISA Court is a secret Court, its a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch.

Sweeping up the records of millions and millions of people who are under no suspicion of any wrongdoing at all may well represent a violation of their Constitutional Rights.

(in reply to tazzygirl)

Post #: 36

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 4:57:28 PM

tazzygirl

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Ok, so this is a swipe at the Patriot Act itself.

Now, unless I am mistaken, that act allows the government can freely search emails, phone records and financial records without a court order.

How is that possible?

_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

Post #: 37

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 5:02:08 PM

epiphiny43

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It helps when the discussion acknowledges what happened, not what reporters (maybe the least educated of the chattering classes?) assume. The records in question are after the fact data of who called whom and for how long. Data mining this info along with lists of known suspects reveals 'cells' of intercommunicating people who may be planning 'mischief'. At which point actual conversations, texts and shared files may be monitored because there is now probable cause to suspect particular individuals. Who called when and whom never was secret information. The phone companies have always kept this data for numerous reasons, including fees.
Assuming any communication on electronic media can be or is secret is charming, childish and . . . badly misinformed. The good guys have now acknowledged this, the bad guys have always depended on knowing it and most of us not. If you actually care, there are encryption methods that are more difficult to break than open signals. The latest high tech encryption has been broken as well. It just takes bigger computers.

< Message edited by epiphiny43 -- 6/12/2013 5:05:03 PM >

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Post #: 38

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 5:16:06 PM

tazzygirl

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Thats sorta my thought process here. Maybe I am naive, but it seems to me that just a list of phone numbers isnt going to give a while lot of information, except who may be calling whom. It doesnt give the why's, for which theyhave to have a court order for, yes?

_____________________________

Telling me to take Midol wont help your butthurt.
RIP, my demon-child 5-16-11
Duchess of Dissent 1
Dont judge me because I sin differently than you.
If you want it sugar coated, dont ask me what i think! It would violate TOS.

(in reply to epiphiny43)

Post #: 39

RE: Rand Paul hypocrisy - 6/12/2013 8:35:16 PM

njlauren

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quote:

ORIGINAL: isoLadyOwner

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

I keep coming back to the FISA Court. So 7 of the judges have been appointed since 2008. if the court order was approved, how does that indicate the administration (and it would seem Bush also had a bit of leniency here, so I am not sticking up for Obama) did anything wrong?

The Constitution trumps the Patriot Act if they conflict.

Obama and his predecessor were sworn to uphold the Constitution. The FISA Court is a secret Court, its a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch.

Sweeping up the records of millions and millions of people who are under no suspicion of any wrongdoing at all may well represent a violation of their Constitutional Rights.

Actually, it doesn't. All rights have limits on them and burdens, and whether I think this program stinks or not (I do, but for reasons I'll talk about in a bit), and when it comes to national security rights can be amended. For example, the right of Habeus Corpus can be suspended, congress can authorize the president to suspend that right, as Lincoln did during the civil war. The press and and is censored when it comes to secret data, the government, especially in times of war, has the right to stop certain information from being published or spoken about . The burden is high, you can't just willy nilly do that, but for example, Habeus Corpus is part of the 4th amendment I believe (I could be wrong about that).

BTW, before everyone wants to jump on Obama, the NSA was doing similar things during the Bush administration, congress authorized much of what is going on in 2002. Bush at one point tried a cute one with the warrantless wiretaps, for example, his administration tried to argue that if they got information from a wireless wiretap, that involved criminal activity but not terrorism, that it should be allowed in court....which would be a direct violation of the bill of rights, because that would be outside the scope of what congress authorized because of terrorism, and also would be basically a fishing expedition to try and find criminal activity, which is illegal.

The problem isn't so much PRISM and what it is doing (It is using metadata to find suspicious patterns, then drill down), it is that the meta data they are using could be used to harass individual people, the patterns of our phone usage can tell a great deal about what you are, what you are doing and so forth, and can be used badly. The same technology that can be used to search for potential terrorist activity can be used to give a pretty good profile of individual people, and that is the violation.

Likewise, the NSA has hooks into internet firms where they could potentially get real information, our e-mails, what we are browsing and so forth, and I am pretty certain that the NSA probably has agreements with ISP's to get certain data when they want, I have been told by people i trust who would know, that they already have hooks in those systems.

My real concern is not what they are doing, but how it can be used. Boehner, who is one of the most foul people I have ever seen in office, made this big hoo hah about how this is blown out of proportion, how there are safeguards, that the government isn't out to get you, etc, but his dismissal flies in the face of history, in that we have decisive historical reason to think it can and probably will be misused. Anyone remember what the FBI used to do under Hoover, wiretaps without warrants, political blackmail, trying to undermine anti war and civil rights protesters by getting dirt on them? Anyone remember the CIA, supposedly banned from working in the US, doing just that, infiltrating civil rights groups and anti war groups and dirty tricks (don't believe me? Read up on what the Church commission found).

I also personally believe that PRISM is a waste of time, I know a bit about such kinds of data mining and analysis operations, and as described its chances of really finding anything useful is slim, it probably costs a lot more to operate in manpower and computer power then it is worth, because among other things, any suspicious pattern needs to be checked out and verified, and it is more then likely that a lot of what it comes up with are false positives, noise......

What I want to know who is watching this? FISA sounds great on paper, but the FISA court is basically a rubber stamp, it is kind of like a grand jury, where you can pretty much indict a ham sandwich, FISA judges are already more then likely to approve anything. More importantly, you get someone in the white house like a Nixon, or some Jesus freak out to establish Christian dominionism, or any other authoritarian type (imagine Janet Reno as president....), and you are asking for trouble. What scares the shit out of me is I hear all those defending this blindly, not questioning it, citing the threats against the US and so forth, and how these measures are necessary to protect the state and so forth......the Soviet government justified its police state in the same way, arguing that its measures were to protect against enemies out there, North Korea says the same thing.......Thomas Friedman wrote this piece in the Times about how people should be more scared of terrorists then our own government, how this is needed to protect us, it is worth giving up privacy to be safe...and the problem with that is, what history shows when you do that, you end up neither with privacy nor safety, that the measures invading privacy that supposedly made us safer actually do the opposite (maybe a sense of false security), and that once you give up that privacy so easily, it never comes back, and the government becomes even more of a threat. I am no tin hatter, I don't believe in the new world order, I am not the NRA militia type hoarding guns for when the government is gonna come with its black helicopters, but I am old enough to remember what came out of the Church commission, what Tricky Dick did, and what the FBI did, to ever carte blanche assume government taking this kind of power is innocuous. It may be right now, as we speak, but once they get this kind of power, it tends to grow.

(in reply to isoLadyOwner)

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