[quaist]

I absolutely agree with that, only it's a much more difficult and complex discussion to have.

In fact, I'm not firmly convinced we can accurately judge what would be the 'right' balance between maintaining an individual privacy everyone can live with and monitoring terrorist threats sufficiently. Without proper intelligence knowledge, I'm afraid we're unable to properly assess the real levels of danger, you know.



What's in the news on that front:

Federal judge rules NSA phone surveillance legal NEW YORK (AP) — Citing the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal judge ruled Friday that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ telephone records is legal, a valuable tool in the nation’s arsenal to fight terrorism that ‘‘only works because it collects everything.’’ U.S. District Judge William Pauley said in a written opinion that the program lets the government connect fragmented and fleeting communications and ‘‘represents the government’s counter-punch’’ to the al-Qaida’s terror network’s use of technology to operate decentralized and plot international terrorist attacks remotely. ‘‘This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,’’ Pauley said. ‘‘The collection is broad, but the scope of counterterrorism investigations is unprecedented.’’ Pauley’s decision contrasts with a ruling earlier this month by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, who granted a preliminary injunction against the collecting of phone records of two men who had challenged the program. The Washington, D.C. jurist said the program likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search. The judge has since stayed the effect of his ruling, pending a government appeal. Both cases now move to appeals courts for a conflict that some believe will eventually be settled by the Supreme Court. The chances that the nation’s top court will address it increase if the appeals courts reach conflicting opinions or if the current use of the program is declared illegal. Pauley said the mass collection of phone data ‘‘significantly increases the NSA’s capability to detect the faintest patterns left behind by individuals affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations. Armed with all the metadata, NSA can draw connections it might otherwise never be able to find.’’ He added: ‘‘As the Sept. 11 attacks demonstrate, the cost of missing such a threat can be horrific.’’ Pauley said the attacks ‘‘revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaida plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaida.’’ The judge said the NSA intercepted seven calls made by one of the Sept. 11 hijackers in San Diego prior to the attacks, but mistakenly concluded that he was overseas because it lacked the kind of information it can now collect. Still, Pauley said such a program, if unchecked, ‘‘imperils the civil liberties of every citizen’’ and he noted the lively debate about the subject across the nation, in Congress and at the White House. ‘‘The question for this court is whether the government’s bulk telephony metadata program is lawful. This court finds it is. But the question of whether that program should be conducted is for the other two coordinate branches of government to decide,’’ he said. A week ago, President Barack Obama said there may be ways of changing the program so that is has sufficient oversight and transparency. In ruling, Pauley cited the emergency of the program after 20 hijackers took over four planes in the 2001 attacks, flying two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field as passengers tried to take back the aircraft. ‘‘The government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program — a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data,’’ he said. Pauley dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which promised to appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. ‘‘We’re obviously very disappointed,’’ said Brett Max Kaufman, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. ‘‘This mass call tracking program constitutes a serious threat to Americans’ privacy and we think Judge Pauley is wrong in concluding otherwise.’’ Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said: ‘‘We are pleased the court found the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program to be lawful.’’ In arguments before Pauley last month, an ACLU lawyer argued that the government’s interpretation of its authority under the Patriot Act was so broad that it could justify the mass collection of financial, health and even library records of innocent Americans without their knowledge, including whether they had used a telephone sex hotline, contemplated suicide, been addicted to gambling or drugs or supported political causes. A government lawyer had countered that counterterrorism investigators wouldn’t find most personal information useful.

The article is actually longer than this excerpt, so please click on the title if you want to read it wholly.

[sunnykerr]

It's not very surprising that it should be ruled legal.

The alternative would have been to admit that the government is currently involved in mass illegal activity in violation of its citzens' constitutional rights. With Gitmo Bay still open, that was never ever going to happen.

The issue is finding ways to curb the current practices, not eliminate them outright.

I think the American psyche is still scarred by the experience of the September 11 attacks, and with freaking good reason obviously.

So we're now in an era where there will be surveillance and spying on the citizenry. They just need to find a balance where it can be justified within the bounds of constitutionality.

Meanwhile, I just wanted to mention that Obama has officially signed a two-year bipartisan budget agreement into law. I think it's clear both parties just want to turn their attention to the 2016 presidential elections and that's why they could find agreement.

[quaist]

Could it be that they've finally realized how holding the whole country hostage every few months leads to, exactly, nowhere?

[sunnykerr]

There is a theory out there that members of Congress are interested in doing nothing more than they are in just about anything else.

Having said that, the presidential elections are looming, so even Congress has to get in gear if the parties hope to accomplish anything come 2016.

[quaist]

I know we've discussed Snowden over and over again, but since an NYT op-ed's been on everyone's lips today...

Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower By THE EDITORIAL BOARD January 1, 2014 Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency’s reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe, as it collects information about their phone calls, their email messages, their friends and contacts, how they spend their days and where they spend their nights. The public learned in great detail how the agency has exceeded its mandate and abused its authority, prompting outrage at kitchen tables and at the desks of Congress, which may finally begin to limit these practices. The revelations have already prompted two federal judges to accuse the N.S.A. of violating the Constitution (although a third, unfortunately, found the dragnet surveillance to be legal). A panel appointed by President Obama issued a powerful indictment of the agency’s invasions of privacy and called for a major overhaul of its operations. All of this is entirely because of information provided to journalists by Edward Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency’s voraciousness. Mr. Snowden is now living in Russia, on the run from American charges of espionage and theft, and he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community. • Mr. Snowden is currently charged in a criminal complaint with two violations of the Espionage Act involving unauthorized communication of classified information, and a charge of theft of government property. Those three charges carry prison sentences of 10 years each, and when the case is presented to a grand jury for indictment, the government is virtually certain to add more charges, probably adding up to a life sentence that Mr. Snowden is understandably trying to avoid. The president said in August that Mr. Snowden should come home to face those charges in court and suggested that if Mr. Snowden had wanted to avoid criminal charges he could have simply told his superiors about the abuses, acting, in other words, as a whistle-blower. “If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistle-blower protection to the intelligence community for the first time,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference. “So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.” In fact, that executive order did not apply to contractors, only to intelligence employees, rendering its protections useless to Mr. Snowden. More important, Mr. Snowden told The Washington Post earlier this month that he did report his misgivings to two superiors at the agency, showing them the volume of data collected by the N.S.A., and that they took no action. (The N.S.A. says there is no evidence of this.) That’s almost certainly because the agency and its leaders don’t consider these collection programs to be an abuse and would never have acted on Mr. Snowden’s concerns. In retrospect, Mr. Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not. Beyond the mass collection of phone and Internet data, consider just a few of the violations he revealed or the legal actions he provoked: ■ The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor. ■ The agency broke into the communications links of major data centers around the world, allowing it to spy on hundreds of millions of user accounts and infuriating the Internet companies that own the centers. Many of those companies are now scrambling to install systems that the N.S.A. cannot yet penetrate. ■ The N.S.A. systematically undermined the basic encryption systems of the Internet, making it impossible to know if sensitive banking or medical data is truly private, damaging businesses that depended on this trust. ■ His leaks revealed that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress when testifying in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting data on millions of Americans. (There has been no discussion of punishment for that lie.) ■ The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rebuked the N.S.A. for repeatedly providing misleading information about its surveillance practices, according to a ruling made public because of the Snowden documents. One of the practices violated the Constitution, according to the chief judge of the court. ■ A federal district judge ruled earlier this month that the phone-records-collection program probably violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. He called the program “almost Orwellian” and said there was no evidence that it stopped any imminent act of terror. The shrill brigade of his critics say Mr. Snowden has done profound damage to intelligence operations of the United States, but none has presented the slightest proof that his disclosures really hurt the nation’s security. Many of the mass-collection programs Mr. Snowden exposed would work just as well if they were reduced in scope and brought under strict outside oversight, as the presidential panel recommended. When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government. That’s why Rick Ledgett, who leads the N.S.A.’s task force on the Snowden leaks, recently told CBS News that he would consider amnesty if Mr. Snowden would stop any additional leaks. And it’s why President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.

I'm still not quite on-board.

We don't know whether Snowden really tried to report what he viewed as unconstitutional mass surveillance or whether he tried it 'vigorously enough' -- which of course wouldn't dismiss the point of criticism that it's most likely not the easiest of tasks to make oneself heard when taking on an institution like the NSA.

As for the assertion that Snowden's opponents failed to come of with conclusive evidence that his leaks seriously damaged intelligence work; well, how could anyone 'measure' that exactly?

When terrorist attacks happen, it's nearly impossible to prove it couldn't have been averted because terrorists resorted to not using telecommunications, made sensible to the fact that they might be watched/bugged through Snowden's revelations.

When it comes to diplomatic relations -- Germany, Bolivia to name just two -- the damage done is so obvious it cannot be denied.

[sunnykerr]

I don't know.

I keep changing my mind about whether Snowden went about it the right way or the wrong way.

The strained diplomatic relationships... that's on either the government or its intelligence contractors. There is no diplomacy when you're spying on your allies. Having it revealed that this was going on obviously didn't help, but it was wrong to begin with. So if they were willing to spy on Germany, Brazil and Bolivia, they should have been ready to handle the consequences once they were found out. There was always a risk that they would be found out.

As for the intelligence leaks and whether Snowden tried hard enough to find an alternative to reform in that department, we obviously will never know.

Terrorists always seem to have the upper hand when it comes to information and access to it. So that's one part I didn't love about all this, how it seemed to take away whatever advantaged was gained from spying on the citizenry at large.

The truth is, in order to have an intelligence community who fights terrorism, there's a lot we can't know about. And I can accept that.

I do think there's a not-invalid concern to be had for at least trying to find a balance between what is gained by giving up our right to privacy and just how much of that privacy we do give up.

[quaist]

Originally Posted by sunnykerr (View Post) The truth is, in order to have an intelligence community who fights terrorism, there's a lot we can't know about. And I can accept that.

That's the part I've been wondering about, essentially ever since this whole Snowden story came up. I can see how people are worried about their privacy and fear a potential 1984-like surveillance state being in the making; but why does what seems to be a majority think it's actually such big a deal that they're willing to let important diplomatic ties to the US be strained by that and talk Snowden up as a 'hero'? Obviously no one would feel comfortable knowing the NSA's reading their mail -- but let's face it, how likely is such a scenario? They're collecting billions of emails and other digital stuff, basically all they can do is go through certain spot tests and pile up metadata.

As long as there are no horror stories concerning serious abuses of such data, what's the actual problem?

Honestly, I don't care if the one or other birthday email to a relative is being read by some NSA employee whom I'll never get to see either way -- if the underlying practice helps prevent even one single casualty resulting from an averted terror attack.

[sunnykerr]

Here's the thing, though, what Snowden uncovered.. the part that scared people, was the lack of oversight.

I think we're all on board with giving up some of our rights for the sake of national security, up to and including privacy.

But if there is no one making sure that what we give up, we give up for a reason, then that creates a scenario wherein innocent men wind up in Guantamo Bay for years and years without due process and without any of us ever hearing about it until way after the fact.

Like I said, I have no problem with not knowing what the NSA or the CIA or CSIS (in Canada) do. But I would like to believe that there is someone that does. That they can't just spy on my computer for giggles and that, should an actual terrorist exist out there whose name bears a mild resemblence to mine, I don't risk rendition by travelling to the States like I do twice a year.

That's the part that sticks to mind.

As for why foreign countries would risk their diplomatic relationships with the U.S. over the fact that it was discovered to be spying on their officials... You'd have to ask them.

[quaist]

You certainly named cases in which abuses of intelligence work/power have happened, though I think you can never fully get rid of those.

As horrible and traumatizing what they had to go through was, you'll always have some kind of unfortunate 'statistical outliers'.

I tend to view they need to be 'tolerated' as long as they remain isolated cases -- as harsh as such an opinion may sound.

Of course they must get punished nonetheless, as in a functioning system they also provide for continual reviews of the whole bigger concept behind it.

[sunnykerr]

Oh, I'm not saying the system should be perfect.

You're quite right there, I don't think there will ever be a system in which everything happens the way it should.

But it shouldn't take five or seven years to free an innocent man.

Innocent men shouldn't be subjected to torture either.

So, at the end of it all, mostly, I think the need for oversight in these matters is pressing and undeniable.

Errors will always happen, but not to that extent and not in a way that leaves innocent men to be tortured for years on end.



Again, I don't need to know personally about all of it. But someone has to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.

[quaist]

Originally Posted by sunnykerr (View Post) Again, I don't need to know personally about all of it. But someone has to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.

I'll second that

[sunnykerr]

Meanwhile:

US jobless benefits passes key Senate test vote A bill to renew payments to some 1.3 million long-term unemployed Americans has overcome a key vote in the Senate. The chamber voted 60-37 to limit debate on the three-month extension of jobless benefits, beating the 60-vote hurdle. But its path through the House is unclear, as the majority Republicans seek ways to offset the $6.4bn (£3.9bn) cost with budget savings elsewhere. President Barack Obama urged Congress to extend the "vital economic lifeline" of the benefits. 'Not lazy' He rejected arguments that the benefits strip the unemployed of the motivation to seek work. "The long-term unemployed are not lazy," Mr Obama said. "They're not lacking in motivation. They're coping with the aftermath of the worst economic crisis in generations." The unemployment programme, which extends jobless benefits beyond the 26 weeks provided by most states, expired on 28 December, leaving those who have been unemployed for a long time without the weekly benefit. With six Republicans joining Senate Democrats, lawmakers voted to limit debate on the bill, a key hurdle for passage. All 37 votes against limiting debate were Republican. The six Republicans who voted for the bill were Rob Portman of Ohio; Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Susan Collins of Maine; Dan Coats of Indiana; and Dean Heller of Nevada. But the Senate Minority Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans would seek changes to the bill to include budget cuts so the bill's cost would not add to the budget deficit. House Speaker John Boehner has endorsed this approach but Senate Democrats panned the effort. The bill's co-sponsor, Senate Democrat Jack Reed, said it was more important to "help these families" who were "pushed off an economic cliff on December 28". Among the Republican proposals is a delay of Mr Obama's healthcare law key mandate, a requirement to purchase health insurance or pay a tax penalty. The move would potentially save money by removing the requirement to provide federal health subsidies for lower-income individuals.

Does anybody else thing there's something strange in even trying to tag budget cuts to renewing benefits for the unemployed?

And aren't people who collect unemployment benefits people who contributed to the unemployment purse when they were employed? Isn't that how that works?

Because, if that's the case, how do you justify denying unemployment insurance to people who contributed to the budget unless other "benefits" are cut elsewhere?

[sunnykerr]

West Virginia chemical spill means no showers, laundry for thousands CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A chemical spill left the water for 300,000 people in and around West Virginia's capital city stained blue-green and smelling like licorice, with officials saying Friday it was unclear when it might be safe again to even take showers and do laundry. Federal authorities began investigating how the foaming agent escaped a chemical plant and seeped into the Elk River. Just how much of the chemical leaked into the river was not yet known. Officials are working with the company that makes the chemical to determine how much can be in the water without it posing harm to residents, said West Virginia American Water president Jeff McIntyre. "We don't know that the water's not safe. But I can't say that it is safe," McIntyre said Friday. For now, there is no way to treat the tainted water aside from flushing the system until it's in low-enough concentrations to be safe, a process that could take days. Officials and experts said the chemical, even in its most concentrated form, isn't deadly. However, people across nine counties were told they shouldn't even wash their clothes in affected water, as the compound can cause symptoms ranging from skin irritation and rashes to vomiting and diarrhea. No more than six people have been brought into emergency rooms with symptoms that may stem from the chemical, and none was in serious or critical condition, said State Department of Health & Human Resources Secretary Karen L. Bowling. The company where the leak occurred, Freedom Industries, discovered Thursday morning about 10:30 a.m. that the chemical was leaking from the bottom of a storage tank, said its president, Gary Southern. Southern said the company worked all day and through the night to remove the chemical from the site and take it elsewhere. Vacuum trucks were used to remove the chemical from the ground at the site. "We have mitigated the risk, we believe, in terms of further material leaving this facility," he said. Southern said he didn't think the chemical posed a public danger. He also said the company didn't know how much leaked. He also said more than once that it had been a "long day" for him and others at the company. After six minutes, Southern attempted to leave the news conference but was asked more questions. "Look guys. It has been an extremely long day," Southern said. "I have trouble talking at the moment. I would appreciate if we could wrap this thing up." The news conference ended a few minutes after that.

There is a longer article, if anyone cares to learn more about how this all began.

I would say that, they may claim these chemicals aren't lethal, but if they cause vomiting and diarrhea, I can see how continued contact with said chemicals would become lethal with time.

I suppose these things just happen.

[sunnykerr]

Report: NSA 'collected 200m texts per day' The US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages a day from around the world, UK media report. The NSA extracts and stores data from the SMS messages, and UK spies have had access to some of the information, the Guardian and Channel 4 News say. The reporting is based on leaks by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and comes ahead of a key US policy announcement. The NSA told the BBC the programme stored "lawfully collected SMS data". "The implication that NSA's collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false," the NSA said. President Barack Obama is set on Friday to announce changes to the US electronic surveillance programmes, based in part on a review of NSA activities undertaken this autumn by a White House panel. On Thursday, the White House said Mr Obama had briefed UK Prime Minister David Cameron on the review. The documents also reveal the NSA's UK counterpart GCHQ had searched the NSA's database for information regarding people in the UK, the Guardian reports. In a statement to the BBC, GCHQ said all of its work was "carried out in accordance with the strict legal and policy framework". 'Privacy protections' The programme, Dishfire, analyses SMS messages to extract information including contacts from missed call alerts, location from roaming and travel alerts, financial information from bank alerts and payments and names from electronic business cards, according to the report. Through the vast database, which was in use at least as late as 2012, the NSA gained information on those who were not specifically targeted or under suspicion, the report says. The NSA told the BBC its activities were "focused and specifically deployed against - and only against - valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements". While acknowledging the SMS data of US residents may be "incidentally collected", the NSA added "privacy protections for US persons exist across the entire process". "In addition, NSA actively works to remove extraneous data, to include that of innocent foreign citizens, as early as possible in the process." The Guardian and Channel 4 also reported on a GCHQ document on the Dishfire programme that states it "collects pretty much everything it can" and outlines how the GCHQ analysts are able to search the database, with certain restrictions. The GCHQ statement said: "All of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with the strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate and that there is rigorous oversight." 'Cosmetic' Mr Snowden, a former contractor with the NSA, has been charged in the US with espionage and is currently a fugitive in Russia. Last month, a US panel gave President Barack Obama dozens of recommendations for ways to change US electronic surveillance programmes. On Friday, Mr Obama is expected to outline his response to those suggestions as well as his own conversations with a variety of US groups concerned with spying, in a speech at the justice department. He is expected to support the creation of a public advocate to argue in front of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secretive bench that approves the bulk records collections, according to details leaked to US media by the White House. Mr Obama is also expected to extend some privacy protections to foreigners, including more oversight on how the US monitors foreign leaders, and limit how long phone information is kept. But he is not expected to take the bulk phone collection out of the hands of the NSA, as the panel recommended, instead leaving that question to Congress. Civil rights and privacy groups were wary ahead of the speech. "While we welcome the president's acknowledgement that reforms must be made, we warn the president not to expect thunderous applause for cosmetic reforms,'' David Segal of Demand Progress told the Associated Press news agency.

How's that for doublespeak?

We don't spy on ordinary citizens, but we get rid of the information we get off of them early in the process.

Pft!

Yeah, that's not transparent at all!

I mean, I've already covered by issues about how this all leads to targeting innocent people, but the fact also remains that accumulating such large quantities of data also means there's simply too much of it to analyze efficiently.

So the whole program is pointless.

[GardenSirens]

I never understood the point of all this NSA spying. I understand how certain things should be targeted like chat boards that are known connections with terrorists....same way they catch pedophiles....but to go in the way they do with text messages, skype conversations, etc....it's like...really? Really? Looks like Obama is trying to reverse some of the power of NSA, though i can't confirm that, just saw it in passing on the news sites I go on.