The NSA, Verizon and Your Privacy

[Fusion]

Next thing ya know, the .gov will legally be sending out nigerian fraud emails and phishing your paypal.

[Vedubin01]

Next thing ya know, the .gov will legally be sending out nigerian fraud emails and phishing your paypal.

Paypal is financial institution, .gov already has that information.

[Fusion]

http://rt.com/news/merkel-monitor-phone-us-634/

Time for Doh!bama to resign, all Snowden charges dropped and safe return home assured.

[nando]

and france.. and mexico..

yet, retards from both the right and left will continue to label Snowden a "traitor".

[Vedubin01]

and france.. and mexico..

yet, retards from both the right and left will continue to label Snowden a "traitor".

finally something both of us agree on.

[nando]

I know - you'd think it would be a rallying point or something. I guess most people don't know enough to care, they figure whatever, what do I have to hide?

[Vedubin01]

hopefully it gathers steam!

Just saw this in reaction to the NSA spying. Still a tight vote.


EU parliament votes to suspend US from financial databank to avoid spying



The European Parliament voted Wednesday for US access to the global financial database held by a Belgian company to be suspended because of concerns that the US is snooping on the database for financial gain rather than just to combat terrorism.
The Strasbourg based parliament voted 280 in favor, with 254 against, with 30 abstentions, and called for a suspension of US access until a full inquiry clarifies the situation.

http://rt.com/news/eu-us-data-spying-640/

[Fusion]

http://rt.com/news/merkel-hollande-us-spying-669/

The 28 members of the EU could speed up the adoption of amendments to the bloc’s data protection rules, set in 1995, AFP reported Thursday.

This could seriously complicate life of American companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others that have been exposed as voluntarily sharing private data communications with the US secret services.

The new amendments would enable EU citizens to demand that IT companies erase traces of personal data from the internet. Stricter data protection rules would be applied to international electronic money transferring systems, such as the Europe-based SWIFT, also used by the US security agencies for collecting personal data on EU citizens.

In case the communication giants do not abide by the new regulations, fines could be as hefty as 100 million euros.

The potential regulations could make personal data collection in Europe impracticable financially. US communication giants have been furiously lobbying against the amendments.

Given the angry reactions of Berlin and Paris to US surveillance, the EU could put new data protection rules in place as early as 2015.

Yeah, because the internet won't change in a year and a half, dipshits.

I say germany demand the immediate return of all gold held in the US. That's when shit would hit the fan.

[tjts1]

I was expecting tin foil hat land. This thread delivers.

[Fusion]

Well, without Snowden, anything in this thread would've been considered deep tinfoilhattery. I hate giving credit to Alex Jones, but he's been talking about this for years and Prism spying has been publicised on the webz even a decade back.
Never mainstream media like now though.

[tjts1]

Well, without Snowden, anything in this thread would've been considered deep tinfoilhattery. I hate giving credit to Alex Jones, but he's been talking about this for years and Prism spying has been publicised on the webz even a decade back.
Never mainstream media like now though.

Oh please, Snowden deserves a slow, painful death. If the NSA doesn't spy on everyone who will? Did you ever think about that? I don't trust any of you and neither should the government. The NSA should be keeping a close on every one you crackpots.

[mrsleeve]

So we should trust you then ....................................

[mrsleeve]

I am better Barry and his minions will just ignore this ruling too.


Courts Find the NSA phone data mining a violation of the 4th.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/16/justice/nsa-surveillance-court-ruling/index.html

Washington (CNN) -- A federal judge said Monday that he believes the government's once-secret collection of domestic phone records is unconstitutional, setting up likely appeals and further challenges to the data mining revealed by classified leaker Edward Snowden.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the National Security Agency's bulk collection of metadata -- phone records of the time and numbers called without any disclosure of content -- apparently violates privacy rights.

His preliminary ruling favored five plaintiffs challenging the practice, but Leon limited the decision only to their cases.

"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval," said Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush. "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."

Leon's ruling said the "plaintiffs in this case have also shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim," adding "as such, they too have adequately demonstrated irreparable injury."

He rejected the government's argument that a 1979 Maryland case provided precedent for the constitutionality of collecting phone metadata, noting that public use of telephones had increased dramatically in the past three decades.

Leon also noted that the government "does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature."

However, he put off enforcing his order barring the government from collecting the information, pending an appeal by the government.

A Justice Department spokesman said Monday that "we believe the program is constitutional as previous judges have found," but said the ruling is being studied.

Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, a critic of the NSA data mining, said Leon's ruling showed that "the bulk collection of Americans' phone records conflicts with Americans' privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution and has failed to make us safer."

He called on Congress to pass legislation he proposed to "ensure the NSA focuses on terrorists and spies - and not innocent Americans."

Explosive revelations earlier this year by Snowden, a former NSA contractor, triggered new debate about national security and privacy interests in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Snowden's revelations led to more public disclosure about the secretive legal process that sets in motion the government surveillance.

In a statement distributed by journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first reported the leaks, Snowden said he acted on the belief that the mass surveillance program would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that Americans deserved a judicial review.

"Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many," according to Snowden, who is living in Russia under a grant of asylum to avoid prosecution over the leaks in the United States.

The NSA has admitted it received secret court approval to collect vast amounts of metadata from telecom giant Verizon and leading Internet companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

The case before Leon involved approval for surveillance in April by a judge at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a secret body that handles individual requests for electronic surveillance for "foreign intelligence purposes."

Verizon Business Network Services turned over the metadata to the government.

Leon's ruling comes as the Obama administration completes a review of NSA surveillance in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks.

CNN's Jake Tapper reported Monday that tech company executives would meet with President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the issue.

Obama plans to sit down with Tim Cook of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google, as well as executives from Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce, Netflix , Etsy, Dropbox, Yahoo!, Zynga, Sherpa Global, Comcast, LinkedIn and AT&T, a White House official said.

Some of those companies issued a joint letter last week calling on the government to change its surveillance policies in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

Last month, the Supreme Court refused to take up the issue when it denied a separate petition, which was filed by the Electronic Information Privacy Center. Prior lawsuits against the broader NSA program also have been unsuccessful.

Days after the Snowden disclosure in June, some Verizon customers filed legal challenges in the D.C. federal court.

The left-leaning American Civil LIberties Union also filed a separate, pending suit in New York federal court.

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of the 1970s, the secret courts were set up to grant certain types of government requests-- wiretapping, data analysis, and other monitoring of possible terrorists and spies operating in the United States.

The Patriot Act that Congress passed after the 9/11 attacks broadened the government's ability to conduct anti-terrorism surveillance in the United States and abroad, eventually including the metadata collection.

In order to collect the information, the government has to demonstrate that it's "relevant" to an international terrorism investigation.

However, the 1978 FISA law lays out exactly what the special court must decide: "A judge considering a petition to modify or set aside a nondisclosure order may grant such petition only if the judge finds that there is no reason to believe that disclosure may endanger the national security of the United States, interfere with a criminal, counterterrorism, or counterintelligence investigation, interfere with diplomatic relations, or endanger the life or physical safety of any person."

In defending the program, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that "15 separate judges of the FISA Court have held on 35 occasions that Section 215 (of the Patriot Act) authorizes the collection of telephony metadata in bulk in support of counterterrorism investigations."

Initially, telecommunications companies such as Verizon, were the targets of legal action against Patriot Act provisions. Congress later gave retroactive immunity to those private businesses.

The revelations of the NSA program and the inner workings of the FISC court came after Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian newspaper. Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then Russia to escape U.S. prosecution.

The case is Klayman v. Obama (13-cv-881).

[Subtle]

The NSA has seen some interesting porn from me then.

[BraveUlysses]

Holy shit!