Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations...

[Ben]

Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...tion-user-data

[Ben]

NSA Blackmailing Obama?

[Ben]

Snowden: Symptom or Disease?

[Ben]

Noam Chomsky "Snowden Should Be Honored for Telling Americans What the Government Was Doing"

[Ben]

[Ben]

[Ben]

"South Park" Opens Its 17th Season With an Episode on NSA Spying:

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-med...e-eric-cartman

[Ben]

[Stavros]

A district court in New York has ruled in favour of the NSA by Judge William Pauley on the grounds that the agency needs to be able to 'join all the dots' in a broad sweep of metadata:
“The ACLU argues that the category at issue – all telephony metadata – is too broad and contains too much irrelevant information. That argument has no traction here. Because without all the data points, the government cannot be certain it is connecting the pertinent ones,” said Pauley.

However, Judge Pauley also made this bizarre remark:
Judge Pauley said privacy protections enshrined in the fourth amendment of the US constitution needed to be balanced against a government need to maintain a database of records to prevent future terrorist attacks. “The right to be free from searches is fundamental but not absolute,” he said. “Whether the fourth amendment protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a question of reasonableness.”
Pauley argued that al-Qaida's “bold jujitsu” strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.

It is wrong to claim that the Salafist ideology adopted by al-Qaeda is a 'seventh century ideology' -the Saudi version of it was created in the 18th century, in fact Mohammed ibn Abdul-Wahab, the man who created it, is an almost exact contemporary of Benjamin Franklin, and much recent versions of this political creed is of 20th century origin. It is no more stone age than the internet. If Judge Pauley is this ignorant, does it mean his ruling is of similar value?

[broncofan]

It doesn't bode well Stavros. Although interpreting the law doesn't require a great deal of outside knowledge, it does require some common sense. One element of that is not to include something in an opinion for rhetorical flare if you are not sure of its relevance or accuracy.

The only relevant aspect of that statement is that we are dealing with modern technology. The elements of reasonableness and expectations of privacy built into the 4th amendment do need to take into account how broadly such devices are used and what people's expectations are when they use them.

The paradox of "reasonable expectations" is that they change once the issue has been discussed and people hear about what the government is doing. What I mean is that if the government intrudes on your privacy, and the courts do not immediately strike it down, the NSA can argue that you did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy because you were given notice they could be listening. Perhaps courts ignore this element of it, and imagine a world without aggressive law enforcement. I have not read enough to know.

I am a bit mixed on what is private and what isn't...it's very easy when you're dealing with spatial dimensions but not so much when you're dealing with electronic signals and their transmission.