Drudge: Spy satellites watch Americans from space

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
Jim Oberg wrote:

Yeah, but at the same time, don't we hear a lot
of whining from Bushaters that he FAILED to take
these steps to prevent 9-11?


Yup. In their twenty-twenty hindsight, Bush wasn't doing enough dot
connecting prior to 9-11, but since then, unaccountably, he's done too
much. Hard to connect dots when you're not allowed to see them.


I'll hold my tongue here and wait for the next scandal to come along.
The way things are going for Bush, that shouldn't be more than another
week or so.

"Scott Hedrick" wrote in message
.. .

"jonathan" wrote in message
news
That really isn't the issue. It's that these are secret agencies

If they were *secret*, you wouldn't know about them.


The nickname for the NSA is 'No Such Agency'~

jonathan wrote:

Yeah, but at the same time, don't we hear a lot
of whining from Bushaters that he FAILED to take
these steps to prevent 9-11?


Yup. In their twenty-twenty hindsight, Bush wasn't doing enough dot
connecting prior to 9-11, but since then, unaccountably, he's done too
much. Hard to connect dots when you're not allowed to see them.

I'll hold my tongue here and wait for the next scandal to come along.
The way things are going for Bush, that shouldn't be more than another
week or so.

No doubt, since the media seems determined to manufacture them, from
whole cloth if necessary.

"Charles Buckley" wrote in message
...
Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
: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
f the FISA rules for national security searches.

Got any cites? Seems to me that the records of who you called don't
belong to you.

Uh, so? That doesn't mean they are public information. The people who
do
own them can still have a legal obligation to keep them confidential,
and
to release them only in well-defined circumstances. Property rights are
not the only form of rights involved.


If I were into a lot of conspiracy theories, this would throw the
whole criminal prosecution of Qwest upper management into a whole new
light.

The legal precedences are related to an item called a pen register.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_register

The law is specific... It requires a warrant to log the info
according to the Pen Register Act. That has *never* been done
in this case and the specific request by Qwest executives for
this to be done was rejected out of hand by the NSA reps. And,
while the requirement is very loose (they do not need to provide
a probably cause), the fact the NSA did not request it is
troubling.

Between FISA and the other laws, the legal regime is clearly
defined. The Patriot Act did not change any legal requirements
for issuing any call tracing, only expanded the legal regime to
cover the Internet. It requires a warrant and since it is a very
specific set of laws enacted by Congress, it can not be overturned
by an Executive Order. The President was not given discretionary
powers in this matter. Executive Orders only apply to non-defined
legal regimes. When there is a direct conflict between an Executive
Order and a law passed by Congress, the Congressional Law has
precedence.



Bush is claiming that Congress authorized the eavesdropping
in the Patriot act. Citing some vague reference in the act to
the war on terror. I think there's two things the Supreme Court
needs to decide. One, if building a massive database of all
phone calls made for data mining is ok. It shouldn't be as the
police need to claim each individual is part of an investigation to
get business records. And whether it's ok for our foreign intelligence
agencies to be involved in domestic intelligence. It seems clear
Bush considers all our assets to be available, while Congress
has been equally clear domestic and foreign intelligence should
be kept seperate.

What bugs me is all the loopholes the Bush policy creates.
If they do find probable cause on an American using this
massive database, then there's nothing stopping the NSA
from actually listening in without a warrant by using the FISA
exceptions.

That's what FISA is all about, allowing the listening in without
a warrant in advance, but after the fact, so that the red tape
doesn't cause damaging delays.

Thomas Schoene wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
: Thomas Schoene wrote:
:
: :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
: f the FISA rules for national security searches.
:
: Got any cites?
:
:The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act forbids the intelligence
:agencies from conducting any electronic surveillance of US persons
:without a warrant if domestic law enforcement would be obliged to seek a
:warrant for the same type of surveillance.

Except they're not conducting the surveillance. They're just getting
the data from someone who already has it.

:The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 specifically sets a
:requirement for warrants for the use of a "pen register," which is
:defined as any device used to record phone numbers called by a certain
:user. This was done to override a 1979 court decision that had allowed
olice to use pen registers without warrants.

One can make the case that they're not in violation of this, since
they're not collecting data on 'certain users', but rather doing a
general acquisition of data that someone else has already collected.

: Seems to me that the records of who you called don't
: belong to you. WHAT was said would seem to be covered, but marketers
: can get hold of a lot more intimate things.
:
:What marketers can get access to is irrelevant. The government is held
:to higher standards in many ways, because it has greater powers. All a
:marketer can do is annoy me or potentially rob me; the government can
:arrest me (or in this era hold me without charge).

Except the government isn't doing anything but acquiring already
existing data. If the data was not subpoenaed but was rather simply
acquired the way any other civilian would acquire it, no laws have
been violated.

: How is a listing of who you've called any different than a record of
: what web sites you've visited?
:
:It isn't. But that's not disclosable without a warrant either.

Of course it is. If it wasn't, tracking cookies would be illegal. It
might be illegal for the government itself to hand you a cookie that
reported tracking data back but there's nothing illegal in their
simply getting the information from some advertising group that
already has it.

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

In article ,
Charles Buckley wrote:
As others have noted, there are explicit laws about collecting records of
calls, not just about listening in.

The thing is, the whole thing could have been done within the
existing laws. With a recognized legal background and procedure
combined with the current security situation, the odds of the
FISA judged turning this down was remote.

Indeed so. It would have involved some extra formalities, but wouldn't
really have slowed things down much. These people didn't *care* whether
what they were doing was legal or not, and that's dangerous and needs to
be stopped, even if you assume their motives to be noble and their cause
to be legitimate. (Noble motives and legitimate cause do not make them
less dangerous; quite the contrary.)

The satellite photos seem to be legal and not require
a warrant. That changes if they switch to IR or other
devices designed to see through walls and obstructions.

The legal yardstick here appears to be what the public could observe, so
you *might* be able to make a case for visible-light satellite photos
being illegal, if their resolution is higher than what a passenger in a
(legally-flown) aircraft could see, *and* the areas photographed are not
visible to the public from the ground. I wouldn't bet a lot of money on
it, but it's not out of the question.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:...Seems to me that the records of who you called don't belong to you.
:Uh, so? That doesn't mean they are public information. The people who do
wn them can still have a legal obligation to keep them confidential...

They can, but can you point to a piece of law that says that they do?

Others have already identified specific laws requiring warrants for the
release of records of calls. It's obscure but established law.

:...marketers can get hold of a lot more intimate things.
:Sometimes, and sometimes not. That doesn't mean they -- or random
:government agencies -- are entitled to get *this* particular type of
:information.

Well, yes, it largely does. If the information is publicly available...

This information isn't publicly available. There's a difference between
something that might perhaps be available to a clever and unscrupulous
marketer, and something that's available to the *public*. It's not public
information unless it's available (legally) to anyone (perhaps after
payment of a suitable fee or after undertaking significant effort).

:...It's quite legal for your
:employer to monitor conversations on your office phone... but a cop who
:does it without a warrant is in big trouble if he's found out. (And if he
:asks your employer to, and the employer does, *both* are in big trouble --
:acting at his request makes the employer an "agent of the government" and
:subject to the same rules.)

The only real reason this is different is because your employer owns
your office phone.

Nope. Note the second part of what I said -- even though he owns the
phones, there are some legal limits on what he can do with that power.

But we're not talking about phone eavesdropping, so that hardly seems
an appropriate explanation for treating WHO you call (rather than what
you say, which would be phone eavesdropping) any differently than
which web sites you visit.

You missed my point (although I admittedly worded it poorly): the reason
why the two are different is that there is well-established law for the
phone system -- including limits on release of call records -- while the
legal situation for the net remains vague.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Scott Hedrick ) wrote:

: "jonathan" wrote in message
: news : That really isn't the issue. It's that these are secret agencies

: If they were *secret*, you wouldn't know about them.

Ah Hedrick, you would have made a fine Communist Party member in the
former Soviet Union...

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: jonathan wrote:

: Yeah, but at the same time, don't we hear a lot
: of whining from Bushaters that he FAILED to take
: these steps to prevent 9-11?
:
:
: Yup. In their twenty-twenty hindsight, Bush wasn't doing enough dot
: connecting prior to 9-11, but since then, unaccountably, he's done too
: much. Hard to connect dots when you're not allowed to see them.
:
: I'll hold my tongue here and wait for the next scandal to come along.
: The way things are going for Bush, that shouldn't be more than another
: week or so.

: No doubt, since the media seems determined to manufacture them, from
: whole cloth if necessary.

Right, just like Nixon wasn't a crook, the Washington Post created
Watergate out of whole cloth.

Eric

Rand Simberg wrote:


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.


MY GOD! NOT THE MORMONS!
Nuke Salt Lake City NOW! Before it's too late!
(cut to secret KH-13 satellite "Moroni Macaroni" and its amazing ability
to spot pairs of two guys in business suits and short hair as they walk
through our defenseless cities.)


If the White House breaks the law, sooner or later someone
is going to leak it.


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


None that is unclassified, that is. :-D

Pat