A couple of interesting things in news about the NSA

[thewayne]

First, I didn't see it but apparently the weekly CBS news program 60 Minutes did a pure puff piece on the spy agency that held water about as well as my spaghetti strainer. I probably would have been throwing objects at my TV had I seen it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/60-minutes/


Meanwhile, a US District Court judge in Washington, DC, said that the NSA bulk collection of telephone metadata is blatantly unconstitutional. His decision seemed to hinge on two points. First, the case law that the government's arguments were predicated upon was from the late '70s, long before cell phones were ubiquitous, and things have changed. The case, in 1976, a purse-snatcher started calling his victim and harassing her, the police traced the calls without a warrant and the courts ruled that the thief had no reasonable expectation of privacy and upheld the non-warranted search. Now this judge, 34 years after the SCOTUS upheld that conviction, said that reasoning isn't really sensible any more, especially with the NSA siphoning so much information and retaining it forever.

The ruling included an order for the NSA to cease collecting this info, but he stopped short of ordering it implemented since it's obvious the government will appeal the ruling.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/16/251645205/federal-judge-rules-nsa-bulk-phone-record-collection-unconstitutional

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/bulk-telephone-metada-ruling/

Comments

[silveradept]

Wow, a Republican appointee said that the government's warrantless spying program was umconstotutional. That, by itself, should rock the foundations of the Beltway.

That said, about fucking time.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was quite interesting that it was a Bush 2 appointee who made the ruling. We shall see what happens as the appeal process wends on.