RE: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations.
June 10, 2013 at 11:58 am
(This post was last modified: June 10, 2013 at 11:59 am by Minimalist.)
(June 10, 2013 at 2:30 am)Tiberius Wrote:Quote:...National Security Agency is secretly eavesdropping on telephone calls and emails of Americans communicating with people outside the United States...With all due respect Minimalist, that is far from what the NSA have been doing according to recent leaks. A lot of this eavesdropping is internal, and in some cases, may involve non-US citizens as well.
I'm not sure what they are doing. Collecting records of who called who and for how long doesn't quite seem to fit the definition of "eavesdropping" (which implies wiretapping to use an old-style term.)
During WWII the intelligence services were able to make significant insights just on the basis of "traffic analysis:" which headquarters was talking to which lower headquarters without even being able to decipher the contents. If that (or a more sophisticated version of it) is what they are doing and then going to the FISA court for a warrant it is legal. Or at least it has been upheld so far.
The larger issue is should there be a secret court and we have not really had a reasoned debate - not that reasoned debates are even possible anymore - over it. What we had was a load of shit thrown together in the aftermath of 9-11 when everyone was in a panic. I submit that this is not the best way to throw away one's rights to privacy but it does seem to happen that way more often than not.
