Secret Court Approves Continued NSA Spying

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
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Messages
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On Friday, without much in the way of a public announcement, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was renewed by the FISA court. The prior order was set to expire at 5pm Friday afternoon, but the ruling by the court approved renewing FISA just prior to the deadline.

There is some good news to this week's happenings. We now know more than ever before exactly how the NSA's telephony metadata program works. Unfortunately, the more we learn, the less it seems we can do.
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At least Obama put out a quick impromptu speech on Trayvon Martin to get people talking. I think he's a magician.

Why is it that the rest of our allies don't want us spying on them, the American people don't want this, yet they continue to do it? I've said it before - the government no longer works for the people.
 
One thing to notice is that the NSA has access to encryption used by Microsoft. So they can circumvent it. Yet how often do you hear about law officials demanding the password for a linux machine?

Any hope of cloud being the future has been laid to rest thanks to the NSA.
 
Ur_Mom said:
At least Obama put out a quick impromptu speech on Trayvon Martin to get people talking. I think he's a magician.
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The chief justice of the SCOTUS picks the judges who are on the panel, and in expected partisan ways, 10 of the 11 current judges Chief Justice Roberts picked are republican appointees. The make up of the secret court, and decisions, has virtually nothing to with Obama.

I get the outrage, but it's aimed at the wrong direction. It would literally take an act of Congress to stop this stuff.

Did you know John Roberts is also chief justice of the NSA’s surveillance state?

:themoreyouknow:
 
pxc said:
The chief justice of the SCOTUS picks the judges who are on the panel, and in expected partisan ways, 10 of the 11 current judges Chief Justice Roberts picked are republican appointees. The make up of the secret court, and decisions, has virtually nothing to with Obama.

I get the outrage, but it's aimed at the wrong direction. It would literally take an act of Congress to stop this stuff.


Understandable, however, when anything went wrong or still does go wrong it is the Bush administration that gets blamed, Obama is now in his second term, he deserves the blame now, it happened under his watch and he did nothing to stop it.
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Well we can hardly say Secret Court when you just publicly announced their actions can we? :p
 
pxc said:
The chief justice of the SCOTUS picks the judges who are on the panel, and in expected partisan ways, 10 of the 11 current judges Chief Justice Roberts picked are republican appointees. The make up of the secret court, and decisions, has virtually nothing to with Obama.

I get the outrage, but it's aimed at the wrong direction. It would literally take an act of Congress to stop this stuff.
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It was more of a "let's put out a big news item to take the attention off of this when we quietly announce it". Not blaming Obama for the FISA courts or anything with it's going on, just with the slight of hand and moving peoples attention elsewhere.
 
Ashbringer said:
One thing to notice is that the NSA has access to encryption used by Microsoft. So they can circumvent it. Yet how often do you hear about law officials demanding the password for a linux machine?
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The short summary of all the MS/NSA/Snowden news articles as far as I can determine is that MS decrypts messages encrypted by outlook.com that are requested by the NSA before it gives the messages to them. That doesn't have anything at all to do with machine passwords or Linux.
 
It's not really a secret court. Anyhow, it's good this got upheld. We need to make sure government agencies have the ability to keep people in the US safe from themselves. Just like we're starting to regulate cell phone use in cars because people are too dumb to not talk and drive, we need to keep an eye on what they're doing because they're too dumb not to do stuff that will kill other people.
 
qfwm said:
pxc said:
The chief justice of the SCOTUS picks the judges who are on the panel, and in expected partisan ways, 10 of the 11 current judges Chief Justice Roberts picked are republican appointees. The make up of the secret court, and decisions, has virtually nothing to with Obama.

I get the outrage, but it's aimed at the wrong direction. It would literally take an act of Congress to stop this stuff.


Understandable, however, when anything went wrong or still does go wrong it is the Bush administration that gets blamed, Obama is now in his second term, he deserves the blame now, it happened under his watch and he did nothing to stop it.
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And he's not going to. Next president we have will promise to take back America from Obama's decisions, and yet will continue to push things that take away the freedoms of this country; and in short - do everything the opposite of what he/she promised.
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Nothing will change until the aliens finally stop laughing long enough to help us.
 
qfwm said:
Understandable, however, when anything went wrong or still does go wrong it is the Bush administration that gets blamed, Obama is now in his second term, he deserves the blame now, it happened under his watch and he did nothing to stop it.
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Congress is in charge of overseeing the program, and renewing it. It is not under executive branch control.

It's not much of a stretch to blame a particular president who pushed for the surveillance, and noting that it was passed under a congress with the same party affiliation. This kind of domestic spying was a neocon's wet dream, and they got it. The "secret" court is controlled by judges it pushed. This is one of the those things which is so awful that it's hard to admit it came from the party you supported.
 
aardvark sandwich said:
Obama supports the program.

Good effort though.
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Every Single president has and Will support the program. The constant effort to simply pin this crap on Obama just blows my mind. Literally Back to back to back presidents of this kind of crap happening and STILL both sides are blindly defending theirs saying the other party is worse. Jesus People, Wake the hell up.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Every Single president has and Will support the program. The constant effort to simply pin this crap on Obama just blows my mind. Literally Back to back to back presidents of this kind of crap happening and STILL both sides are blindly defending theirs saying the other party is worse. Jesus People, Wake the hell up.
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^^ This one gets it. ;)
 
pxc said:
The chief justice of the SCOTUS picks the judges who are on the panel, and in expected partisan ways, 10 of the 11 current judges Chief Justice Roberts picked are republican appointees. The make up of the secret court, and decisions, has virtually nothing to with Obama.

I get the outrage, but it's aimed at the wrong direction. It would literally take an act of Congress to stop this stuff.

Did you know John Roberts is also chief justice of the NSA’s surveillance state?

:themoreyouknow:
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And the NSA works for the Military. And the Military doesn't work for Obama. Oh, wait....
 
pxc said:
Congress is in charge of overseeing the program, and renewing it. It is not under executive branch control.

It's not much of a stretch to blame a particular president who pushed for the surveillance, and noting that it was passed under a congress with the same party affiliation. This kind of domestic spying was a neocon's wet dream, and they got it. The "secret" court is controlled by judges it pushed. This is one of the those things which is so awful that it's hard to admit it came from the party you supported.
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'oversight' is to keep informational tabs on their activities to decide if there isn't any over-reach and/or approve budget. The running of the program comes from the President.
 
The (very troubling) issue aside, this Adam guy needs to edit his damn copy;

"While the administration these things is very different than a judge saying them"

" We recently learned that the NSA surveillance covered not only individuals with potential terrorists but also everybody they know and everybody that they know."

ahem

[saying]

[ties]

does anyone edit any more?
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
It's not really a secret court. Anyhow, it's good this got upheld. We need to make sure government agencies have the ability to keep people in the US safe from themselves.
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The concept of freedom is clearly lost on you, it also includes the freedom to make mistakes.

It doesn't mean you are free from consequences of those mistakes.
 
Generally, any secret surveillance program loses its potential to be effective when the target knows about the surveillance. Imagine a police stakeout on a crackhouse if all the dealers knew the police were watching. So who's the target?
 
FISA was renewed by the FISA secret court.

Tells you everything you need to know!
 
gdonovan said:
The concept of freedom is clearly lost on you, it also includes the freedom to make mistakes.

It doesn't mean you are free from consequences of those mistakes.
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Well I dunno about that. I think that freedom shouldn't be allowed in the sense that people are allowed to say or do what they want becausd they do stupid things. I mean, really, you already can't do whatever you want so we might as well admit it's true and make sure the government has whatever controls it needs to keep the herd fat, dumb, and happily entertained.
 
jpm100 said:
And the NSA works for the Military. And the Military doesn't work for Obama. Oh, wait....
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The NSA is a totaly seperate entity just like the CIA is. The NSA doesnt work for the military but the military is assigned to the NSA in doing "projects". The NSA is in its own right and gets it mandate from the congress and white house. The military makes no mandates or rules or anything for the NSA to follow. It is run by the civilians in goverment.

So any spying bs or law breaking is due to said orders from the white house and/or congress. The military cant tell the NSA what to do but the NSA sure as hell can tell the military what to do.

I just wanted to point that out.
 
qfwm said:
Understandable, however, when anything went wrong or still does go wrong it is the Bush administration that gets blamed, Obama is now in his second term, he deserves the blame now, it happened under his watch and he did nothing to stop it.
Click to expand...

SCOTUS appointees are lifetime FYI. So we'll be dealing with Bush II's fuck ups for decades.

DECADES.

This is why terrible presidents are sooo terrible: their mistakes can effect the country for years or even decades after they're out of office.

So secret courts are awful, and quite frankly so is Third-Way-for-Pay Obama, but even if he was totally against the secret courts his options to fix that problem are limited at best.

Given the political reality of the US we'll probably have to put up with this crap for at least until 2020 when the national demographics start forcing major changes in Congress and we see the Repub's strangle-hold on the House of Rep. broken. Until then things will likely stay the same or even get worse if the Repubs get the Senate in 2014. Then they'll be able to screw the country up as bad or worse as they're screwing up North Carolina and Michigan.
 
mesyn191 said:
SCSo secret courts are awful, and quite frankly so is Third-Way-for-Pay Obama, but even if he was totally against the secret courts his options to fix that problem are limited at best.
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I throw the BS flag on that one, the man tosses out executive orders like popcorn.

He is so sad that Gitmo is still open... why don't you close it champ? You are the President.

The bottom line is the current system suits him just fine.
 
Wizard220 said:
The NSA is a totaly seperate entity just like the CIA is. The NSA doesnt work for the military but the military is assigned to the NSA in doing "projects". The NSA is in its own right and gets it mandate from the congress and white house. The military makes no mandates or rules or anything for the NSA to follow. It is run by the civilians in goverment.

So any spying bs or law breaking is due to said orders from the white house and/or congress. The military cant tell the NSA what to do but the NSA sure as hell can tell the military what to do.

I just wanted to point that out.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence
The National Security Agency (NSA) is the central producer and manager of signals intelligence for the United States. The NSA operates under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, and reports to the Director of National Intelligence.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence#ODNI_Organization
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is the United States government official – subject to the authority, direction, and control of the President – required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 ...
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While Obama is not interested in improving the economic well being of average Americans he has shown before he is quite willing to make social changes. So maybe he wouldn't mind shutting down the secret courts and all the NSA domestic spying. But his executive authority as President doesn't allow him to over ride Congress like that so don't really know what he'd like to do there.

Gitmo is a whole other mess and I think Obama definitely should've done more to try and shut it down but he has been cock blocked repeatedly by Congress on that issue as well.
 
gdonovan said:
So I thought at first but have run into people who actually think like this.
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It's derived from Andrew Jackson's perspective, but there are legitimate roots in historic politics...not that a particular view needs historic backing. You could like socks and that'd be okay regardless of historic support. :)
 
Andrew Jackson was a sociopath who engaged in genocide for fun and profit though.

You're really best off not deriving anything from that guy at all.
 
mesyn191 said:
While Obama is not interested in improving the economic well being of average Americans he has shown before he is quite willing to make social changes. So maybe he wouldn't mind shutting down the secret courts and all the NSA domestic spying. But his executive authority as President doesn't allow him to over ride Congress like that so don't really know what he'd like to do there.

Gitmo is a whole other mess and I think Obama definitely should've done more to try and shut it down but he has been cock blocked repeatedly by Congress on that issue as well.
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Like this President cares what congress thinks. For example, de facto implementing the dream act which didn't pass congress. I guess the apologist talking points are strong on these issues.
 
Oh and there's that whole the Democrats had both houses of congress for 2 years thing.
 
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