NSA reveals that it illegally gathered thousands of phone records, to the appalled astonishment of FISA court judge

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This will probably be the legacy of Snowden: By revealing most everything, he eliminated the “we’d like to debate it openly but we can’t reveal anything” excuse that has stifled any debate. The debate is on.

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Snowden will be in the history books and he’ll be very much on the right side of history. To all those who maligned him, they’ll be an embarrassment to their future generations of children who’ll read about the doltish detractors who were too docile, uninformed, evil and/or dense to understand he was an American patriot.

I wouldn’t be proud of my grandfather if he was on the wrong side of history in American civil rights. This is very similar.

All of you that denounced Snowden and called him a traitor, your legacy will be shit. Might as well retire your family name, because it’ll just be an embarrassment for future generations.

If you’ve supported Snowden, then please pat yourself on the back. You helped to do good for this world.

And… on that note, it’s time to give the EFF the support they need to fight for you.

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Thanks @doctorow and thanks EFF.

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Well, we’re certainly starting to see the reasons for the government’s ‘Don’t listen to this Snowden guy’ propaganda attack, eh?

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“accidental violations of the law”

cute.

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So who goes to jail for this crime?

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Pretty much confirms the idea that sunlight is the best disinfectant. This secrecy bullshit has gone on long enough.

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Yeah, does that work when you go 85 MPH on the freeway? You could be accelerating to avoid a dangerous driver and not realize you have increased speed to that degree. No, that excuse doesn’t work.

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Most of what people are attributing to Snowden was revealed years ago. And much of the rest is the result of lawsuits that have been in the works for years. Snowden’s responsible for much of the mainstream media waking up. And since that’s pretty much all congress pays attention to, that’s obviously good.

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I don’t think that is entirely true. With Snowden’s release, The ACLU had proof in order to file a lawsuit. Having suspicions without basis will get you nowhere fast and your case tossed out.

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If I criticize how the NAACP handled the Claudette Colvin case, does that mean I’m on the wrong side of history? Sometimes, people on the right side do screwed up things. Sometimes while trying to help. You should be able to point that out without being told you’re on the “wrong side”.

This lawsuit was filed by the EFF a couple years ago.

And you don’t need proof of something to request a release of info under FOIA, that would totally defeat the purpose.

The ACLU’s 2008 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act, which authorized the so-called “warrantless wiretapping program,” was dismissed 5–4 by the Supreme Court in February on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had been monitored. ACLU attorneys working on today’s complaint said they do not expect the issue of standing to be a problem in this case because of the FISA Court order revealed last week.

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If I criticize how the NAACP handled the Claudette Colvin case, does that mean I’m on the wrong side of history?

This is about NSA spying and Snowden. Go start another thread if you want to discuss a different issue. You’re off-topic and irrelevant.

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Most of what people are attributing to Snowden was revealed years ago.

Snowden’s responsible for much of the mainstream media waking up

He’s responsible for more than that for christ’s sake. Why minimize what he’s done?

2010s global surveillance disclosures - Wikipedia?

Thanks to Snowden, we now know the NSA:

• Had James Clapper lie under oath to us - on camera - to Congress to hide the domestic spying programs Occured in March, revealed in June.

• Warrantlessly accesses records of every phone call that routes through the US thousands of times a day June September

• Steals your private data from every major web company (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al) via PRISMJune and pays them millions for it August

• Pays major US telecommunications providers (AT&T, Verizon, et al) between $278,000,000-$394,000,000 annually to provide secret access to all US fiber and cellular networks (in violation of the 4th amendment). August

• Intentionally weakened the encryption standards we rely on, put backdoors into critical software, and break the crypto on our private communications September

• NSA employees use these powers to spy on their US citizen lovers via LOVEINT, and only get caught if they self-confess. Though this is a felony, none were ever been charged with a crime. August

• Lied to us again just ten days ago, claiming they never perform economic espionage (whoops!) before a new leak revealed that they do all the time. September

• Made over fifteen thousand false certifications to the secret FISA court, leading a judge to rule they “frequently and systemically violated” court orders in a manner “directly contrary to the sworn attestations of several executive branch officials,” that 90% of their searches were unlawful, and that they “repeatedly misled the court.” September September

• Has programs that collect data on US Supreme Court Justices and elected officials, and they secretly provide it to Israel regulated only by an honor system. September

source for list and sources

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Why, the underlings were just following orders, so we can’t go after them; but we can’t hold the leadership responsible for a few bad apples acting in excess of their authority… Just another instance of Schrodinger’s misconduct, nothing to see here.

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You brought up the Civil Rights Movement, not me. And I’ll say again- one can criticize Snowden’s approach and not be on the NSA’s “side”, just as one could criticize individual Civil Right’s figures approaches and not be pro-segregation.

[quote=“Cowicide, post:17, topic:9458”]
He’s responsible for more than that for christ’s sake. Why minimize what he’s done?
[/quote]The initial leak and the stories about it were info we already knew about (and in many cases, had ongoing lawsuits over). And I’m far from one of Rosen’s insiders. Anyone who reads the paper or Boing Boing, or belongs to the EFF and ACLU knew about this stuff.

And I don’t think a lot of what 's been leaked since is stuff that should have been leaked.

Sorry, but I can’t agree. We might have suspected, but the stonewalling under the guise of “protecting national security secrets” prevented further review. This is the entire value of an insider turning whistleblower. It eliminates the ability to obscure, to stall, to obfuscate with semantic trickery.

If you remember, the administration even blocked the viewing of the legal interpretations that they were using to justify much of this activity. When you can’t even see the wording of their lawyers, it is impossible to know how far they are stretching the usage, or to challenge it.

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