Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations.

[Minimalist]

I don't want to live in a society where my rights can be taken away with confidence and impunity merely because the majority didn't want to know it has been taken away.

Welcome to the real world.

[Tiberius]

...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.

[Anomalocaris]

I don't want to live in a society where my rights can be taken away with confidence and impunity merely because the majority didn't want to know it has been taken away.

Welcome to the real world.

The world isn't real till I am done making it what I would be pleased with.

[Minimalist]

...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.

[Tiberius]

*sigh*

Minimalist, you have no idea what you are talking about for once. Gaining access to phone records is the very least of the NSA's activities. The major leak was of the Prism program, which suggests that the NSA have access to the internal servers of several large companies, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook. If they have direct access to those machines, they have access to a lot more than just phone records.

Please go and read up on the actual leaks before making any more uneducated comments.

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If anyone wants to read a good summary of the current situation, and a compelling argument for why this much secrecy is wrong, you should take a look at one of Bruce Schneier's recent articles. Schneier is a veteran cryptographer and information security guru who has helped design multiple encryption algorithms and is probably the go to guy on anything related to that field.

[Minimalist]

Sad to say, Divi Tiberio, it is your friendly internet companies who are voluntarily cooperating there....after having been given certain assurances.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigat...print.html

PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority.

Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. PRISM recruited its first partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and privacy. Late last year, when critics in Congress sought changes in the FISA Amendments Act, the only lawmakers who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

The FISA amendments act of 2008 gave retroactive immunity to AT&T for its past "cooperation." As a matter of fact, that is about the only provision of the act that I can recall even had some strenuous opposition.

The time to bitch and moan about this shit was when it was enacted. By now it is a tad late.

[Tiberius]

Sad to say, Divi Tiberio, it is your friendly internet companies who are voluntarily cooperating there....after having been given certain assurances.

Again, you haven't kept up with the news. All 9 companies (unlike Verizon) have denied they are part of the Prism program. Edward Snowden has suggested that the NSA have infiltrated these companies and gained access to their servers illicitly via physical methods.

Now, all these 9 companies could of course be lying, but given the testimony of the whistleblower, it is quite possible that they are telling the truth and had no idea that their servers were compromised.

The time to bitch and moan about this shit was when it was enacted. By now it is a tad late.

Bullshit. No part of the law allows the government to violate the 4th amendment, which is what they are doing. Even if there was a law that allowed certain degrees of data collection, it is clear from these leaks that it has gotten out of hand. It's never too late to change the law.

[DeistPaladin]

The time to bitch and moan about this shit was when it was enacted. By now it is a tad late.

This is one of those times where A Theist would be justified in saying "both sides do it". Both Democrats and Republicans are quite happy to sign away our rights to privacy and now we have one president from each political party who's been happy to use the broad powers granted by the so-called "Patriot Act".

Of course, he and other conservatives are NOT saying "both sides do it". They were quite happy when W Bush had that kind of power and would be perfectly content if a Republican were in the White House once again. It's only when the scary-black-Sekrit Muslim guy is in the White House that they are up in arms about the latest "scandal" (the first one of many faux scandals that is actually a legitimate source of outrage).

Maybe they could install an amendment to the Patriot Act where it's only in force when a member of the GOP is president. I shouldn't say that too loudly.

[CleanShavenJesus]

Is it weird for me to say that I'm okay with this? Because I honestly am.

[Tonus]

I'm not. It gets used to combat terrorism today. It gets used to combat "terrorism" tomorrow.