Drudge: Spy satellites watch Americans from space

Eric Chomko wrote:
Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: jonathan wrote:

: I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic. But doesn't anyone find it
: rather curious that Porter Goss suddenly and without
: explanation quits the CIA. This leak over telephone
: surveillance appears almost the next day that might sabotage
: his replacement. Then, almost the next day, the number three
: at CIA, that also quit, has his house raided.
:
: I suspect the CIA wouldn't go along with the administration on
: this issue and they got canned as a result. And the leaks are
: payback. loks to me like Cheney and Rummy are trying to
: bring first the NSA, now the CIA under the control of
: Defense Dept yes-men. The repubs these days demand
: complete loyalty, but they forget that there are still people
: in DC that are loyal to the constitution first.

: Nonsense. They are loyal to their hatred of the administration first.
: Many in the CIA consider their war against the White House (and in favor
: of preserving their bureaucracy) more important than the war against
: people who are trying to kill or convert us.

Rand, you understand that the White House and the CIA are both part of the
Executive Branch of the government, right?

Yes.

Do you always take the Mossad positions on everything political?

No. Do you always have to ask stupid questions that are irrelevant to
the subject at hand?

meiza wrote:

In sci.space.policy wrote:

O-BORG, have you no shame? Probably not. I wonder if you even care,
again, probably not. With the big bucks you get from Defense Inc. why
would you. Some people have a conscience, some don't. Your feeble
attempts to cover-up UFOs and ETs, not to mention the long-term
back-engineering of ET craft, are rather sad. I guess at the end of
the day when you count the millions you (and many others) have
ripped-off from hard-working Americans, you can live with the loss of
your soul. This is why the American Empire will probably no longer
exist, because of greed-heads cannot contain themselves.


This is a classic. Where do these people come from?

The U-Zone.

It's little gems like this that make all the hours wasted worthwhile.

http://cosmic.lifeform.org

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

:In article ,
says...
: There's no evidence that the White House has broken the law, or violated
: the Constitution.
:
:Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
:searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.

And just what is being 'searched'?

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
:searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.

And just what is being 'searched'?

If we're still talking about alleged satellite surveillance -- I haven't
been following the ins and outs of this thread closely -- I believe the
Supreme Court held some years ago that virtually any form of technological
surveillance more capable than (legal) naked-eye observation *does*
constitute "search" and requires a warrant.

(The rationale, which made considerable sense, was that otherwise there
was no telling what invasions of privacy would become legal as high-tech
surveillance gear got better. There's already experimental gear that can
"see" through some kinds of walls.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article om,
george wrote:
How many people get up in arms about this 'spying' when the Democrats
are in power ???

Plenty. It's a bipartisan issue, much though Republicans would like to
think otherwise.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Fred J. McCall wrote:
Kevin Willoughby wrote:

:Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
:searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.

And just what is being 'searched'?

Our phone records. The courts have been pretty clear that the police
need a warrant to get a record of someone's phone calls in a criminal
investigation. The NSA records trawl represents a pretty clear violation
of the FISA rules for national security searches.

I get the DoD 5240.1R brief every year, and it's pretty clear. You must
have reasonable belief that a specific US person targeted for collection
is in contact with a terrorist (or foreign intelligence agent, etc.)
before you can collect on them. That means you can't just trawl through
a database of call records looking for interesting connections. If they
were asking for people who connected with specific known terrorist
numbers, that would probably pass the test. Non-specific record checks
are fishing expeditions, which do not pass the 5240.1 standards for
collection.

--
Tom Schoene lid
To email me, replace "invalid" with "net"

Kevin Willoughby wrote:
In article ,
says...

There's no evidence that the White House has broken the law, or violated
the Constitution.


Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.

Yes.

And so? Do you think that the Supreme Court hasn't read the
Constitution? It certainly wasn't as clear to them as it seems to be to
you.

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
:searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.

And just what is being 'searched'?

If we're still talking about alleged satellite surveillance -- I haven't
been following the ins and outs of this thread closely -- I believe the
Supreme Court held some years ago that virtually any form of technological
surveillance more capable than (legal) naked-eye observation *does*
constitute "search" and requires a warrant.

(The rationale, which made considerable sense, was that otherwise there
was no telling what invasions of privacy would become legal as high-tech
surveillance gear got better. There's already experimental gear that can
"see" through some kinds of walls.)


http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oig/hq/legal/remote4.html


"In 1986, the Supreme Court decided the case of Dow Chemical v. United
States, by and through the Administrator, Environmental Agency, 476 U.S.
227, 106 S. Ct. 1819, 90 L. Ed. 2d 226 (May 19, 1986).

....

The court then tackled Dow's Fourth amendment arguments. In a 5-4
decision, the court held that the taking of aerial photography without a
warrant was not a search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Dow argued
that the taking of the photos was akin to snooping into the "curtilage"
of a private home, which is granted protection as a place where
occupants have a reasonable expectation of privacy that society is
willing to accept. The court rejected the industrial curtilage argument,
finding that the unenclosed commercial area is more like an "open
field." What is observable by the public is also observable by the
Government inspector, without a warrant. "


There are a lot of other cases mentioned later in that article.

"The latest reported judicial decision in the circuit courts on thermal
imaging is the Ninth Circuit case of United States v. Kyllo, 140 F. 3rd
1249 (9th Cir. 1998). The court in Kyllo found an expectation of privacy
that was protected by the Fourth Amendment. The court rejected the waste
heat analogy, but embraced the notion that people possess an expectation
of privacy in the heat signatures of the activities, intimate or
otherwise, that they pursue within the home. "

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

:In article ,
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
::Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
::searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.
:
:And just what is being 'searched'?
:
:If we're still talking about alleged satellite surveillance -- I haven't
:been following the ins and outs of this thread closely -- I believe the
:Supreme Court held some years ago that virtually any form of technological
:surveillance more capable than (legal) naked-eye observation *does*
:constitute "search" and requires a warrant.

But observing things that are (essentially) in the open requires no
warrant at all.

The rationale, which made considerable sense, was that otherwise there
:was no telling what invasions of privacy would become legal as high-tech
:surveillance gear got better. There's already experimental gear that can
:"see" through some kinds of walls.)

The court decisions on this sort of thing are decidedly mixed. The
9th tends to find that everything the authorities do is illegal. Other
courts find the other way.

--
You are
What you do
When it counts.

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:

:Have you read the Fourth Amendment recently? Unwarranted / unreasonable
:searches are clearly in violation of this amendment.

And just what is being 'searched'?


If we're still talking about alleged satellite surveillance

No, the whining is about looking for patterns in phone calls from
records that the phone companies (funny, leftists usually trust the
government more than those evil corporations) routinely collect.