Justice Officials Fear Nation's Biggest Wiretap Operation May Not Be Legal (usatoday.com) 118
schwit1 writes with news about a vast wiretapping program and questions about its legality. USA Today reports: "Federal drug agents have built a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs, secretly intercepting tens of thousands of Americans' phone calls and text messages to monitor drug traffickers across the United States despite objections from Justice Department lawyers who fear the practice may not be legal. Nearly all of that surveillance was authorized by a single state court judge in Riverside County, who last year signed off on almost five times as many wiretaps as any other judge in the United States. The judge's orders allowed investigators — usually from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — to intercept more than 2 million conversations involving 44,000 people, federal court records show."
but its working (Score:5, Interesting)
Look how the narcotics trafficking and related crimes have plummeted in California. Oh wait that's because pot is legal now, nevermind
Re: but its working (Score:5, Informative)
>anti-drug laws that do no good and make no sense
You must be new here. Follow the money.
https://youtu.be/5_UbAmRGSYw [youtu.be]
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That's a human universal in every nation on Earth not just the US. Its why democracy barely works, the stupid people always vote for the most sparkly bauble or get herded like chickens by fear or panic.. Sadly the stupid people are 9 in 10 and the smart ones 1 in 10, which is the real disaster. ... :)
Re:but its working (Score:4, Insightful)
False equivalence.
Murder is clearly a crime with a victim. Recreational drug use is arguably a victimless crime, when done responsibly. This is why alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine are legal despite being extremely addictive and bad for one's health. The exact same reasoning applies to most recreational drugs.
Furthermore, there isn't a black market for murder. People committing murder illegally doesn't fund a mafia to the point of being so powerful that it threatens entire governments (and, of course, reigns terror on innocents). People using drugs illegally does precisely that.
So, the reasons why murder are illegal don't apply to recreational drug use. There are clear benefits to making recreational drug use legal, and murder has none of these benefits.
Logic shows the way. Your thoughtlessness does not.
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Logic shows the way.
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad."
Strat
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"Furthermore, there isn't a black market for murder. "
Isn't that called Craigslist?
Craigslist (Score:3)
I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!
$500 OBO Call Dread Pirate Roberts at 555-238-1212
principals only
do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers
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No. There really is no market for murder. Even in the rare instance where someone seriously seeks out such a market, they end up talking to the police, or finding some unstable fool. The only market for murder is the military contracting one, and you need a lot of dough and connections to use that.
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You contradict yourself twice. Fact: There is a market for murder. There are also professionals who do it.
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That's a bit of a blanket statement. Alcohol and caffeine are not addictive, by the scientific definition of the word, and alcohol is not bad for your health in small quantities. Actually, none of those is bad for you in small quantities.
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I'd be willing to bet that more than one Schedule I drug is not addictive by the scientific definition, and I've read that it's easier to kick heroin than tobacco. Lots of illegal drugs will not harm you in small quantities. You're not differentiating tobacco from marijuana here.
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[citation needed(1)]
[citation needed(2)]
[citation needed(3)]
[citation needed(4)]
[citation needed]^77
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Look how the narcotics trafficking and related crimes have plummeted in California. Oh wait that's because pot is legal now, nevermind
No, pot is still illegal here, MMJ is what's legal. It's a distinction with only a legal difference. In places where pot actually is legal, like CO, drug crime has truly plummeted.
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sorry maybe I should have said medicinal pot. is that ok?
even with non-M MJ being illegal, they whole business of arresting potheads has plummeted. as it should, jailing people for it waste of resources and ruins peope's lives
What we need (Score:2)
What we need is a case like this that does not involve national security where overly broad warrants are issued very much like the warrants that are possibly secretly being issued under the Patriot Act. That is the only way we can get the constitutional issues resolved because at every turn the Federal Courts are running up against state secrets privileges when dealing with these terrorism warrants.
Huh? Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegal? When has that ever stopped the government?
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Certainly not when a high ranking taliban was treated in a doctors without borders hospital, and the US government started bombing that hospital, breaking international treaties, killing innocents, burning down a hospital.
Re:Huh? Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes actually they should be treating them because they are not combatants in the fight between the USA and Taliban. It's also been pretty well established that doctors are supposed to treat anyone regardless of who they are or what side of the fight they are on. It is also well established in international law that it is illegal for any side in a fight to attack a hospital unless that hospital is actively attacking you, regardless of who is in it.
Someone attacking a known non combatant hospital is a war crime and it doesn't matter if the entire leadership of the Taliban was being treated inside it and you had no other way of getting them all.
If it is actually true that it happened, that they knew it was a hospital and nobody from in the hospital was actively attacking them, then everyone involved from the pilot to the person giving the order belongs in prison for a long time.
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If you expect doctors to fight your ideological battles that's your prerogative. Just don't turn around and act surprised if the surgeon holding a knife over you decides to fight someone else's ideological battles where you're the bad guy.
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If you take an oath to do no harm, but save the life of a patient that you know is going to go out and take as many innocent lives as they can, you are a monster. A murderer that uses someone else as your weapon and your oath as a shield.
So now you expect the doctor to pass judgement on whose life is worthy?
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Yes actually they should be treating them because they are not combatants in the fight between the USA and Taliban.
I think you forgot good ol' George W. Bush's comment...
"You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists..."
It is also well established in international law that it is illegal for any side in a fight to attack a hospital unless that hospital is actively attacking you, regardless of who is in it.
Yes, it is... and it has also happened in every war since forever... sometimes by mistake, sometimes not...
This idea of "rules of war" is a nice one, and it works sometimes... but not all the time, because war is hell...
Someone attacking a known non combatant hospital is a war crime and it doesn't matter if the entire leadership of the Taliban was being treated inside it and you had no other way of getting them all.
I don't dispute that it is a war crime... but it still might be worth doing, if it really got the entire leadership in one shot... Keep in mind, only the loser of a war really
Re: Huh? Illegal? (Score:1)
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"Rules of war"? You mean Geneva convention and other applicable international law, right?
Sure, but who enforces them?
Answer: Whomever wins the war.
I didn't say it was a pretty system, I simply explained what the system was.
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Some countries make a half-hearted effort to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes sometimes. That's about as far as it goes for victorious countries.
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Sure, even the USA has done it from time to time... but yes, you're right, they are half-hearted and never to the same extent as enforcement against the loser of the war.
Like I said, I wasn't telling you how great the system was, I was saying what the system was. :)
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The US does not have a very good record on this. What they should have done is go in and capture the guy. Stuff like this is what is supposed to separate us from the terrorists...
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Yes actually they should be treating them because they are not combatants in the fight between the USA and Taliban.
Except that isn't the case, because many of the fighters are non uniform we know who is a combatant and who isn't much of the time. Someone can be a noncom citizen on Tuesday and fighter by Friday over there only to hang up their guns again by Sunday afternoon. The 'rules of war' only work when you are fighting another state that also respects them. They make all kinds of sense, they keep your own people safer and better treated when captured. The thing is you don't send captured forces back home after
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"I don't dispute that it is a war crime... but it still might be worth doing, if it really got the entire leadership in one shot... .."
Oh dear there's that lack of basic military intelligence again. These are not rigid hierarchies. Killing the leaders does not stop the rest, it often makes them worse. They expect the US to try to assassinate their leaders. Also as I pointed out above the US's current attacks on the Taliban are actually helping ISIS to infiltrate them and take over.. That will only make thi
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Those are fair points you make...
Sadly, the answer might be something that people sitting in their currently safe homes simply can't accept...
We might not be killing enough people... we're killing too few to have an effect...
The whole thing sucks, I know that much... but we simply can't accept groups of people that want to see our way of life ended.
It might well come down to an "us or them". Will we have the backbone to do whatever it takes?
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From what I've read, the air strike was called in by US allies who said they were taking fire from the hospital. I wouldn't be surprised to find that (a) that's a war crime in itself, and (b) nobody gets punished for it (except for the people in the hospital, of course).
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Why do people like you keep wanting us to sink to ISIS's or the Taliban's level. Come to think of it where is military intelligence on this - attacking the Taliban at the moment is helping ISIS to insert themselves into Afghanistan instead.. ISIS are worse than the Taliban.. probably even worse than Al Qaeda..
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You mean that time when the local police told the military they were being attacked from the hospital in an area where the territory can change hands quickly?
Please, stop spreading propaganda. You should include details from multiple sides of an issue.
now they are sure that everyone is doing it (Score:2)
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America (Score:4, Insightful)
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Time to rethink the "war on drugs" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Time to rethink the "war on drugs" (Score:5, Informative)
If only it were just the private sector... Public sector prison guards have powerful lobbying through their unions.
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You don't understand bureaucrats. At every turn, nearly every bureaucrat wants to expand his or her power, budget, staff, and salary. Appearing to fight some "war" is a perfect excuse to do this.
Term limits for politicians and bureaucrats both are necessary for the US to avoid becoming ruled by despots.
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As an ex heroin addict I can say that I did not care back then and I still don't. Today I'm on 380mgs/d of Methadone legally (and the state pays for it, fucking hypocrites), but that was not the reason I switched. I switched because it's dirt cheap compared to high purity bth or cw.
Also, because you didn't want to go through life with your brain running on Windows.
This isn't just a flippant comment. My mother was recently on opioid painkillers for a time after a vertebral fracture (apparently one of us kids must have stepped on a crack in the sidewalk), and as a user of my hand-me-down computers for the last thirty years, that's what she said it was like.
Nullify the Grand Jury (Score:2)
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You'd never make it past voir dire.
The Words of the former NSA Tech Director (Score:5, Informative)
"If I am anywhere in the USA, and am talking on my cellphone, can the government hear me? And are they recording? And can they use it against me at any time?"
"Yes." -- Bill Binney, former NSA Tech Director. Worked for NSA 37 years
also:
"Bulk surveillance is not necessary to protect anybody. NSA tries to track everyone on the planet. google: the program Treasuremap. OS's are absolutely not safe!" -- Bill Binney, former NSA Tech Director. Worked for NSA 37 years
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/... [reddit.com]
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The problem is that getting a warrant is little more than a check box on a form -- "Make sure you get one before firing up spy software!" There is no technological barrier to not having one, nor uncorruptible logging of access that can be regularly reviewed later by judges and elected officials. So there is no stopping illegal political spying, the real source of the need for warrants.
What you describe are wbat are effectively "general warrants", also specifically outlawed by the Constitution, which allow
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This may be why US attorneys warned that the data collection might be illegal. Personally, I'd be surprised to find that wiretapping on that scale was legal, without the judge issuing a lot more than five times more warrants than any other judge in the country.
"May"? (Score:2, Insightful)
When you're so far over the line that the DOJ says "hey, you might have gone a little too far," that's a pretty good sign you're well into "clearly illegal" territory.
Not, of course, that the DOJ would ever actually take up a case against a law enforcement office breaking the law. Heaven forfend.
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It's going to be awkward to prosecute anyone involved in these wiretaps, if nothing else.
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the rest of us fear it may be legal.
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If the probable cause is based upon an informant, all a cop has to do is to tell himself that the informant is reliable and the information is sound. From there on, there is no lying to a judge required. If it turns out that your "informant" is just another cop running illegal taps, just don't ask.
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.
"Fear" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because law enforcement personnel sometimes face consequences when they do something illegal?
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That's what plant guns, drugs, "failure to signal", and "he was reaching for something...." are for. It's the get-out-of-jail-free-card equivalent.
Wait... (Score:4, Informative)
If this judge works 52 weeks a year (no vacation), and a typical 40 hour work week (without breaks or lunch), and we assume that "conversations involving 44,000 people" requires that each call (warrant) requires at least 2 people (22,000 warrants max), then this judge would need to approve one of these more than once every six minutes!
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Think of it as being the judicial equivalent of a software clickthrough agreement.
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They're just reading the line that says "authorized by" and writing their name. They can do that in less than six minutes.
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With that number of warrants I would bet the judge is either signing them as bulk warrants or delegating it to a clerk using an authorised signature machine.. He might even just be using a rubber stamp..
Fear? (Score:2)
Headline is grossly inaccurate (Score:2)
It should read
"Justice officials fear public will find out nation's biggest wiretap is illegal and action. Which is unlikely to happen or be effective if it does"
Secret laws? (Score:2)
So, secret laws, then?
Of course you can be transparent -- about the process. Individual cases, yes, people understand that those details may need to be secret, but not the process. Otherwise people might think that there are secret laws in use here.
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If the paper work exists to plant malware to turn a cell phone into tracking beacon, have a stealth live mic option to record all conversations even when "off' is a soft touch option and seems powered down. Thin sealed in battery design helped a lot with that
If so then its j
Looks bad or unconstitutional??? (Score:3)
that's why they've made up parallel construction.
http://thefreethoughtproject.c... [thefreetho...roject.com]
It's way past time that we encrypt and obfuscate all communication.
Legal? (Score:1)
Who cares what is legal [youtube.com]?
Sorry man, I'm just in a groovy mood... dig?
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I had a different song in mind...
"...Don't touch my bags if you please, Mr. Customs Man."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
*May* not be legal? (Score:1)
No, it's just illegal. Not legal under the fourth amendment (lack of probable cause) and not legal under the fourteenth (lack of due process). There are counterarguments, but if this comes up in trial it will go to SCOTUS and they will definitely rule that it is illegal.
Unless you elect a republican. (Next President gets to appoint a lot of justices; republican justices tend to be more anti-criminal and a little less about safeguarding individuals against overreaching by law enforcement). Then they will
Removing a Federal Judge from the Bench (Score:2)
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A better way to set an example would be to draw and quarter him in the public square for being a traitor.
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Stupid people (Score:1)
Of course it's legal! President Obama is a constitutional scholar.
Sheesh!
Nation's 'BIGGEST' wiretap operation, HA HA! (Score:4, Funny)
I love the headline (really do, no /sarc) because it really shocks the monkey. It brings to mind some hypothetical Ouija Board conversation with say, a channeled framer of the Constitution or Machiavelli or Stalin --- using the USB interface Ouija Board I built for faster throughput. I will market it as IRC for the Dead. Once the modern definition of 'wiretap' is cleared up it really gets rolling.
FRANKLIN: I take it you mean the interception of private letters? We affix waxen seals to guard against casual inspection should carriers desire to do this, though there are some with great skill in revealing their contents. Steam from a kettle is often employed. But it is surely an unreasonable search for a government to do so. We also at times employ clever codes.
MACHIAVELLI: It is hard to imagine why such inspection would be desired for the massive daily packets that traverse cities, nations and oceans. Would not the burden of reading become tiresome?
STALIN: I instruct my post office to tear everything open whether there is time to read them or not. They rifle and crumple the contents. Some times they even stain the letters with wine to give correspondents the impression that there was a great feast and their precious documents were passed hand to hand and read aloud. In order to preserve equanimity the State must keep all persons on uneven footing.
ME: In these times hardly anyone speaks in code and there are no seals. We speak into our devices plainly, and the paper packet has become a flowing river of letters passed over wires. Any communication can span the globe.
FRANKLIN: No seals and plain speech everywhere. What an enlightened time!
MACHIAVELLI: So those who talk greatly outnumber those who might listen? In the cacophony of such a mob secrets may be shouted yet unheard.
STALIN: This is madness. Every telephone conversation across the border had a listener. If one was not available the operator would ring you back, at times days later. Shut it all down before it is too late.
FRANKLIN: Surely our government takes steps to protect its citizens from having their conversations heard by hostile governments?
ME: You guys are so behind the times. These are not just voices, everyone is identified and it so happens that the United States Government does most of the listening throughout the entire world, even and especially to its own citizens. People all over the world consider us scoundrels for doing this. They can even store voices and play them back years later. If a tyrant should arise, the Militia will discover that their own names and entire personal histories are laid bare, so the tyrant can clean house more efficiently than any in history.
FRANKLIN: How... can.... this.... be?? No,no no!-------- LOST CARRIER
MACHIAVELLI: How crude and uninteresting. So this is a simple story of gross stupidity and madness then. Ah, and I had hoped that as time progressed the plots of men would become more intricate. I think I will leave now to find a more suitable parallel existence.
MACHIAVELLI <has left the channel>
STALIN: Now it gets interesting. Tell me more about your government's so-called 'wiretaps'.
ME: Well, which one? I mean there are so many. You have
Local policemen tracking people with their phones, able to follow their position. The voices are inside their boxes and with a flip of the switch they could hear them. They're only supposed to flip that switch if they have permission.
It is the law under the CALEA Act [globalsecurity.org] that our telephone companies be able to simultaneously intercept as much as 1 in 100 conversations in cities...
Under FISA people can be followed everywhere in the country and listened to with no involvement by local police and judge.
The DEA, Treasury and IRS can do pretty much anything they want, they rely on judges that rubber stamp requests.
The NSA is a spy organization like your KGB that was bound by charter
A Judge said it was Legal, so it's Legal (Score:1)
At least, until a higher court judge disagrees. As of right this second, however, there was nothing illegal about the wiretaps.
Law 101.
Fear? (Score:2)
I don't understand this word "fear"? How can they "Fear" anything? Does a single one of them actually risk prosecution? Does any one of them think that, if they were prosecuted, the provisions of the Westfall act which allow the Government itself to stand for the defendant would not be invoked?
They have nothing to fear but reassignment at worst.