Court: NSA doesn't have to say if it has records (of warrantless wiretaps)

[kpete]

Source: Associated Press

Court: NSA doesn't have to say if it has records

(AP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court won't make the super-secret National Security Agency divulge whether it has records of the warrantless wiretapping it did of lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay inmates.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from detainee lawyer Thomas B. Wilner.

Wilner and other detainee lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA asking whether it has warrantless wiretapping records on them. But the NSA won't say whether it does or does not, saying that revealing this information would endanger national security.

Federal courts have agreed with the NSA, saying that the FOIA does not require the divulgence of sensitive national security information.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYU96aIPnfGUtQB2_ixKOY1TYQqAD9IKULOG0?docId=D9IKULOG0

[speppin]

1. so, the new conservative SC now sets it standards for the year.

[cstanleytech]

25. Correction!!!!

That should read a "now sets new lower ethical, moral and legal standards for the year."

[speppin]

27. Thank you. much improved.

[onehandle]

2. .

[neverforget]

3. Welcome to the National Security State.

[Solly Mack]

4. k/r

[smuglysmiling]

5. Another step toward the USSR...

the United States Security Republic.

[leveymg]

7. The Soviets never had electronic surveillance remotely this effective.

Is this still a republic, really?

[Diclotican]

12. leveymg

leveymg

Not becouse they was not able to, more becouse they broke down, in the early days of eletronic devices.. But in their heyday USSR was able to more or less survilvance everything what happend inside their own border - and also had some nasty posibility to at least try to survilvance on the outside...

One of the nations, who got close to "perfecting" survilvance as an state act, was maybe DDR, who before unification with BDR, into Germany had plans for a new, very more modern "berlin border". And also had on the scrach pad some intersting plans for using the new PC interface to survilvance everything and everyone inside their own border... If not the east germans had raised up in anger in 1989, and topled the regime... Then STASI and the next generation of DDR leaders could posible have managed to keept the control, with the new tecnology who presented itself from 1990 and forward...

And now US is right into the same ditch as USSR and the east europeans had to encounter after the war.... Wel if you do not know your history, you might as wel discover it the hard way..

Diclotican

[leveymg]

15. I've read Markus Wolf's autobiography and know a bit about the DDR Stasi and USSR

They relied upon HUMINT, and the DDR had hundreds of thousands of paid state agents. The old KGB/GRU was okay at ELINT, but I have the impression we were usually at least 5-10 years ahead of them technologically.

The difference is that today we carry around our listening/tracking devices in our pockets, and "confess" our political thoughts on-line which gets added to our NSA record and FBI/CIA T-quotient profile, and have come to think all this is normal, even in a "free" country, which is really just another crumbling Cold War empire.

I'm not sure there's ever been a precedent for this. So, no we haven't learned the important lessons, but someone will hopefully, some day, will come to learn from our mistakes.

History is great, if you're the one who writes it.

[Diclotican]

40. leveymg

leveymg

True, DDR and STASI relied upon Humint, something they was able to do, by more or less let everyone, spy on eatch others.. And that was not easy to have friends, who you really could trust, and disguss disagreement with the political course and things that was frong with the country.. And who do not reported back to STASI about your disagreement with the official line... STASI was able to keep a check on more or less everyone, and have a gigantic dokument center in the HQ, who in 1989, was reported to be plundred by no one than CIA, who wanted documents about DDR... It is saids that in the chaos in 1989, when the wall was going down and all that, that CIA able to get a man, or many inside STASI, to make a ditch for the personal files... Truckloads of documents was then carried true the new holes in the berlin wall, to be scrutined by the CIA....

KGB and GRU was more than okay with ELINT, but off course, mostly becouse of the tecnological gap between the east and the west, it was a gap between "the good guys and the bad guys" 5-10 year rougly speaking... But even with the gap in tech, the KGB/GRU was able to do a lot of damage with spying, and it was really a Cat and Mouse game between the powers in west, and KGB/GRU in USSR for information.. And even with all its gadgeds russians was able, and are still able to innflict a lot of damage to US and other powers, as they are really good at building relationship between spies, and to groome potensially spies for decades.. How many potensially spies are there in CIA today?.. Who in time wil pass secrets to the FSB/RVS. And when it came to the tech thing, FSB/RVS have not been on the sleeping and have more than posible build up a lot of knowlegde about the new stuff also.. The Russian Itelligence are still one of the best players in the game... Event tho compared to what it was 20 year ago, it is allmoust nothing...

I agee.. 20 year ago, lot of the devices we take for granted today, do not exist, or was just imagine of our fantacy.. And something like eletronic chatroms on internet was not even aviable in a manner as of today.. When I try to tell my uncle kids, that, when I was their age, internet was not able to everyone, becouse most pepole not even had a PC, they belive I was born in the middle ages... Or was walking with the dinosaurs.... Oh, sometimes I really feel old:evilgrin: So many things have happend, in just the last 20 year.. How fare have ve come, and still, we are stuck more or less in old habbits

I am not sure about the presidens for something like our current technological abilites... but off course, history is writen by them, who is in charge. Problems today, is that with the net, no one can really say who is in charge.. 20 year ago, it was far more easy to controll information than today.. Today you can get your own "wiew of the world" by a internet cable.. 20 year ago, you had to read a lot of books to do the same... Hey, just for the record.. Home we had just one TV channel to 1993-94, when we got two channels!.. And now I have a digital box, with the posibilites of 180 channels (more or less filled with crap anyway) and in many other places the posibilites is many houndres of tv channels.... Also filled, for the most part, with crap!

Diclotican

Diclotican

[JDPriestly]

17. Yes, and the information available on the internet about

the workings of the STASI is very limited and superficial. I understand that there is some sort of depository for the records of their surveillance but the quantity of material is enormous. It would be interesting to know more about this. Do you?

[Diclotican]

41. JDPriestly

JDPriestly

I belive most of the information About DDR, and STASI still are under some "secret claim" by the German government - mostly becouse it exist a lot of people who might would be in trouble, if their names was coming out.. The modern German government have literaly thousands, maybe houndred of thousands of files, maybe millions of files,who they do not know really to do with.. One thing is sure, as long as some with the posibility of been a part of STASI is alive, most of the document would be under lock and key for a long time... Maybe our children, and grand children can get to the bottom of it all?

Diclotican

[JDPriestly]

42. In other words, the perpetrators of injustice and the crimes of the East

Germans have to be protected. Further, we Americans can never learn just how freedom is lost. That the information about the STASI agents is not available, that the facts about how the STASI really worked is not available, that's heaping crime on crime.

Americans have no idea . . . .

[Diclotican]

44. JDPriestly

JDPriestly

I do not know, if the evidence that are in the STASI arcives is enough to make criminal prosecutions.. It have also a level of security for the peopole who may be in the arcives.. But everyone who want to have a request to se their papers, can do so, and thousands of former east germans have indeed discovered that their friends, their familiy members, and close nabours, was spying for STASI.. But for many it was a facts of life, in DDR everyone at leat KNOW they was under some sort of survilvance, and that it was more than posible that STASI had documents about them.. Everybody KNOW in DDR..

In US, most americans still belive they can do as they wil, and talk as they ever have been, withouth problems, and where the government are not eysdroping on their phones, or keeping a file about movements they have been doing since god know... the population in US have noe cluse whats so ever about what a secred police really work, and would be ugly suprised when the ugly head of a police state is really rising their head...

If you do not fight it, many, millions of good americans would discover in time what a police state can do.. US have all the tools in The Patriot Act, and the MCA act... The only thing that stay beyound a democracy and a dictatorship in US today, is a President able to use the tools given them by GWBs two terms in office.... Democracy indeed died after 11 sept 2001...

Diclotican

[avaistheone1]

19. What is a person to do?

How can we get our liberties and privacy back? Is there any hope at all?

This stuff makes me sick to my stomach.

[avaistheone1]

20. ..

[harun]

26. I am beginning to think more and more that the USSR was the only

thing keeping us from becoming the USSR. With them gone, power doesn't need to prove they are better than them anymore. There is no more governor on them usurping the rights of the populace. They know we can't do anything about it and have no political alternative, locally or internationally.

[leveymg]

6. US Citizen or not, atty-client privilege regardless, NSA has it.

It's all stored away in the black cube and its miles and miles of remote server farms.

[DeSwiss]

8. K&R

In the Bill of Rights of the United States, there is an attempt to secure certain freedoms and protections by way of mere text on paper. Now while I understand the value of this document and the temporal brilliance of it in the context of the period of its creation, that does not excuse the fact that it is a product of social inefficiency and nothing more. Declarations of laws and rights are actually an acknowledgment of the failures of the social design. There is no such thing as 'rights' - as the reference can be altered at will. The fourth amendment is an attempt to protect against state power abuse, that is clear. But it avoids the real issue, and that is: Why would the state have an interest to search and seize to begin with? How do you remove the mechanisms that generate such behavior? We need to focus on the real cause. ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPmHaTirnCc">Peter Joseph

[wtmusic]

9. Makes a mockery of the requirement for judicial review.

"We got a court order. No, really."

[Diclotican]

10. kpete

kpete

One step into the Soviet system of survilance..... One of many steps into the Soviet system of surviance, even tho KGB was not near able as the NSA is today.... But for its time KGB was one of the finest, and had inside USSR controll over most of what was said in telephones or other communication devices

Sad to say, it is a slippery slope who can end up in dictatorship in a few year - or at least in a orwilian state of mind, where everyone is afraid of speaking their mind.. As it did in Soviet...

And for the record, the powers to survilvance everything and everywhere was not given lighty to the then NKVD, but just as an care taker who should be controlled... And in the USSR constitution, from 1928, to the end in 1991, in theory you had the ability to apell all your grivendences right to the head of the USSR, aka the shairman of the communist party in Kreml

But of course, you seldom get the ability to adress the chairman of the communist party, or anything near the top... And you often had to suck it up, and play by the rules.. And use other means of comunication than the official ones

Diclotican

[TexasObserver]

11. recommend

[Jefferson23]

13. Just say, sensitive national security information and they'll get away with anything.

Must be nice...everyone have that warm fuzzy feeling of being protected now?

[EFerrari]

18. God bless the government for protecting us from ourselves!

lol

[Jefferson23]

43. Yep, they're ever so concerned, lol n/t

[Hissyspit]

14. Constitution? We don't need no stinking Constitution. Ha.

[JDPriestly]

16. Wiretapping defense lawyers could deprive a defendant of

an adequate defense. That is horrible.

[msanthrope]

39. Yes. I think that's the point. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

21. Just more fear based government.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[Javaman]

22. Yay!!!

flush the remaining fragments of the 4th and 5th and a little of the 1st amendments down the toilet! Yay!!!

[Scruffy1]

23. k&r

[thelordofhell]

24. Tell that to Takagi

Die Hard director John McTiernen jailed for 1 year for wire-tapping

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101004/ap_en_mo/us_hollywood_wiretaps

[SteveM]

28. Just plain refused to hear. Lot of that goin' around lately.

[Ozymanithrax]

29. The only amendment this court seems willing to defend is the right to kill...

urrhhh...the right to keep and bear arms...

which, in conservative terms is the might makes right amendment.

[earcandle]

30. Are we in a Democracy yet? How did we lose it? How long ago? Can we get it back?

All crimes carried out by our government and its war mongers
would be classified as national security information wouldn't
it?  To protect those criminals.  Now we know why people who
produce WikiLeaks are willing to endanger themselves.  So we
see what is going on.

Don't feel powerless.  Just don't engage in: the war, the
stock market, the crime war and disease industries and money
will have to follow our lead.  They will jump the fence for
bucks.  Put bucks into new stuff. 

[truedelphi]

36. Totally agree. And this nation is violating at least one provision of

The Geneva Convention by occupying the huge amount of land known as the Green Zone, and building a totally monstrous "Embassy."

Geneva Convention declares that no one fighting a war on another nation's soil may do any of this, once the war is winding down. But we are doing it as we plan on the occupation to continue.

And our government now plans to continue doing it in Afghanistan and PAkistan.

[madrchsod]

31. so much for our democracy.....

maybe one day in the future america will grow up and not be afraid of the shadows on the bedroom walls

[earcandle]

32. Hey! Maybe we should all move to another country, or many other countries. Give our labor there.

[Ticonderoga]

33. Welcome to the Forth Reich.

EIN VOLK !! EIN REICH !! EIN FUHRER !!

[RedCloud]

34. Totally unaccountable government. Brilliant! What's next? Juryless trials?

[truedelphi]

35. Juryless trials already exist. There are NO trials when an agency

whose purview you are under decides you have screwed up.

So that is how the IRS can take away your house and your cars, bank accounts, etc.

The good people over at Unemployment Department (Often called "EDD") can do the same to you.

So can those who hand out Welfare checks, Food Stamps, County or state paid medical or disability insurance or checks.

And now that we have mandated health insurance, that huge agency will have the same ability.

Of course, all these agencies provide for "hearings" which are heard and then decided by a single judge. But you don't have a jury any where in sight.

[Mike Marble]

37. What do you do when confronted by a lawless state?

I don't have a good answer.

[denem]

38. The NSA tapps everything. Always has. Why

would anyone believe that it didn't? 'We have the technology'. Difficult decisions at the Pentagon.