well,it is simple!
Citizens act on Rights,Government acts on Permissions!
All the Hairsplitting,and Inversions to the Constitution can't change that fact!

I take that as no answer,,,,

not so 'simple' really,,,,

Your "logic" is flawed.

The word "unreasonable" doesn't leave room for interpretation in law. Law is based on reason and logic. The judge is supposed to be the quintessential "reasonable man" you hear so much about. (of course I know of some judges who are about as "reasonable" as a drunken lynch mob, but that's another story.)

I guess the reason bugs,taps & emails weren't written into the constitution probably had something to do with the fact that sophisticated electronics & the internet (or even the words we assign to them) didn't exist at the time. I suppose the reason they never went into a constitutional amendment was because the reason for the law was so clear to any reasonable person that they probably questioned having to even write it down in the first place. Ergo, if it is not clear to you what the law means, you are not a reasonable person...good thing you aren't a judge or a cop, or you'd probably be hanging or searching or shooting people on "suspicion" and without probable cause.

Yes monitoring classifies as a "search" of one's home. Read a legal dictionary.

and this comes back to my point,, doesn't it?

courts are there to 'interpret' the laws,,,that decision is left to a majority decision

so obviously,, there is room for interpretation,,,lol


it was once 'reasonable' for people to own slaves , wasn't it?

the constitution addressed it

The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.


the constitution ORIGINALLY (written by 'reasonable' men),,,,had a legal protection written in for people to own slaves without interference from the government


but then, as the constitution OFTEN did,, the PEOPLE and those writing it changed their idea of what was reasonable,, apparently

and decided to write in something to expressly PROHIBIT slavery,,,



so,, putting aside the FACT that the constitution grows with culture and is amendable


,,,what constitutes 'reasonable' courses of action when people seem suspicious,,,to a stranger, a cop, or a government entity,,,,?

what would be some 'reasonable' ways, for instance, to gather information from suspected terrorists? do we think just asking them nicely would work? or announcing to them that we were watching them? ,,,,,,,what is the SOLUTION to the issue of protecting citizens in this age of advanced technology and weaponry that is equally available to citizens and individuals as they are to governments?

yep,actually it is!
Government shall not take any Action that is not expressively allowed to it,while a Citizen is allowed any Action not expressively forbidden to him!
That is the Purpose of a Constitution.
Used to be like that until the Ambulance-Chasers got hold of it!

Now the Legislature is holding down the Constitution,while the Executive has a go at her!

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sounds pretty cut and dried to me!

So by what right does a secret court (another violation of constitutional law) deem they have the power or authority to in fact violate this right of the people so clearly defined in the 4th amendment of a document upheld as the SUPREME law of the land?

I understand where you are coming from, and can't really argue the fact that our constitution grows with culture. At least to a minor degree. Few would argue that expansion of the document to free slaves and protect them as fellow citizens. That, I see, as progress. This is a sign of cultural growth.

There are a few things that should never change, and that is the heart of the constitution. It outlines a system of checks and balances to prevent any entity from becoming too powerful, as there are those who endlessly hunger to seek such powers. It is gravely foolish to loose sight of the necessity for ALL of the checks and balances(with a slight majority of the power residing in the people as per design). This is also why its important for citizens and the government to have comparable weaponry and technologies.

To answer your question, if one has evidence enough to prove suspicion for someone being a terrorist, then that person takes this information to a judge to sign off on it. By signing said document, the judge now takes the responsibility you speak of, and is liable if he/she is checked by the legal system. This is how proper surveillance is done on terrorists.

Is it ideal? No. It may even cost lives. But that is a risk Americans take for being Americans.

"Those who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither" - Benjamin Franklin

kewl

proper surveillance of terrorists is understandable

and also understandable that the gatekeepers sometimes just get 'overzealous' in their duty to protect

but, should be accountable when their overzealousness harms lives in any way,,,,

More or less...

Hussein can override our Constitution at a whim with his patriot act.

exaactly start a thread about martin if there is still a need to discuss

this is about the nsa. people have the right and even the obligation to be suspicious or at least guarded unless they know that in whatever the circumstances are, they don't have to be.


but we don;t have the right, for example to search our neighbor's car or home because we think they take drugs. we would be tresspassing/ breaking & entering.

If someone sees suspicious activities or characters they call the authorities, in the best case scenario we leave it to trained professionals to determine if suspicion is warranted in circumstances where we are talking about suspicion not actual threat. go home, report the activity , go back to your life.

gov'vt has the right/obligation, really to investigate reported activity and determine if there is cause for any further action or diffuse the situation - whatever is appropriate. usually, IME, this process works fine...it is mostly the few off cases that get sensationalised ad nauseum by the media.....(not that mistakes haven't been made. they have been)

I would say electronic property would be considered under "effects" ones personal effects. Email is mail....it is against the law to open someone's snail mail. Why is reading an email not intended for you any different? It's not. Eletronic & telecommunication simply was not present when the Bill of Rights & Constitution were written. As personal effects/property the protections, however, stil apply.

in this context unreasonable is defined in context in the preceding statements: to wit: "the right of the people to be secure" in their homes and property/ personal effects. This means there must be probable cause. If there is no probable cause than the search is unreasonable.

no terms can stand alone but are explained in the context of the paragraph. the right we have to be secure and free from threat to our persons supercedes the government's right to search.

it's moot. the evidence classifying an individual or group as suspected terrorists would amount to probable cause.

In absence of evidence needed to obtain a warrant a search is illegal. I think the gray area is, IS it ok to take an identified threat - such as a list of names of terrorists, terroists groups and their members, including associates and immeidate family and issue a blanket warrant just because they are members of a group, say a mosque, where known terrorists have worshiped. Personally, I have no problem with that as speed and ability to act can be of essence.

I have a problem with it when you and I are suddenly "searched" even tho we have no such affiliates

there is also potential for abuse unless the group under the blanket warrant is well defined. If I am behind an al queda in the grocery, does that make me an associate? So, even if in principal, the blanket warrant seems OK in extreme situations like terrorists, it can too easily stray into civil rights violations.

Muslims have been exempted from NSA spying.

Law is supposed to be unequivocal, so there should be nothing to interpret.



Wrong. The law addressed it. The Constitution HAD to be amended to make itself consistent with the law. It was the realization the common law had been wrong that forced a change in the common law. It didn't become unlawful because somebody passed a "law" on a piece of paper; it just finally dawned on people (after thousands of years) that it was morally wrong to make property out of people.

Of course, those sneaky bankster lackey legislators found a way to make slaves out of them again...legally...not just black ones this time, but practically everybody; but that's a whole 'nother story having to do with banks, businessmen, avaricious or fearful legislators and of course a people's natural propensity to lie to themselves.



Maybe just ask a few questions of the suspicious character (if he has the time or inclination) & if he doesn't feel like talking there isn't much anybody can do.



Just asking nicely probably wouldn't work, because if he was a terrorist, he wouldn't tell you anything and if he wasn't, he wouldn't tell you anything, so either way, questioning wouldn't be very informative.

I wouldn't recommend telling them you're watching them, because if I was told that, I'd give them an immediate cease & desist order, which if not obeyed would result in a civil suit for harassment.

The SOLUTION, is to let the citizens protect themselves like they have since time immemorial. You are about 5 times as likely to be struck by lightning as to be killed by a terrorist, so I see the terrorist threat as kind of a low priority. The trillions your government is spending figting terrorism would be better spent buying people portable lightning rods...it would save a lot more lives for a lot less money.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/08/01/newly-exposed-nsa-tool-xkeyscore-sees-nearly-everything-we-do-online/


Newly exposed NSA tool, XKeyscore, sees 'nearly everything we do online'

by Lisa Vaas on August 1, 2013 | 21 Comments

Filed Under: Featured, Privacy

The only thing US surveillance needs to read the contents of your email, with no prior authorization whatsoever, is your email address.

The only thing US surveillance needs to read your private Facebook chat or private messages is your user name and a date range.

In fact, according to newly revealed documents given to The Guardian by Edward Snowden, one program, called XKeyscore, enables the National Security Agency (NSA) to see “nearly everything a user does on the internet”.

The NSA's training materials boast about XKeyscore being its "widest-reaching" system for squeezing intelligence from the internet, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

On that same day, senior US intelligence officials testified to the Senate judiciary committee amidst the raging debate over mass surveillance.

The Guardian once again turned to documents revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden to detail XKeyscore.

Those documents depict how XKeyscore allows NSA analysts to search, with no prior authorization, through vast databases of emails, online chats and browsing histories of millions of individuals.

In early June, The Guardian had revealed that the NSA collects telephone records of millions of Verizon's US customers under a top-secret order issued on April 25 by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In alerting the media regarding the phone records collection, amidst other things, Snowden in early June had made statements—published by The Guardian in this video interview—that initially sparked controversy but which have now been illuminated by the newly revealed documents.

To wit:

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone [depending on an agent's authorities]... I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge to even the president, if I had a personal email".

At the time, US officials vehemently denied that claim.

Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said this of Snowden's assertion:

"He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

The Guardian's account of the Xkeyscore program, if it bears out, would prove that Snowden most certainly was not lying.

While US law requires the NSA to obtain a Fisa warrant to target a "US person", no such warrant is necessary for intercepting communications between Americans and foreign surveillance targets.

But regardless of legal authority, Xkeyscore puts a dead simple interface in front of analysts that gives them the technology to enable the type of wiretapping Snowden describes, if not the legal authority.

The only thing the analysts needs, The Guardian reports, is identifying information such as an email address or an IP address.

Beyond email or IP address, the documents show that intelligence analysts can search by name, telephone number, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted, or the type of browser used.

The Guardian describes one slide from a 2012 document entitled "plug-ins" that details the various fields of information that can be searched.

From The Guardian:

[The slide] includes 'every email address seen in a session by both username and domain', 'every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)' and user activity – 'the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddylist, machine specific cookies etc'."

The program can search within email bodies, webpages and documents, including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites".

Beyond email, analysts can search HTTP activity by keyword, which gives its analysts what the NSA calls "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", whether it's searching terms on Wikipedia, interacting on Facebook or Twitter, or reading the news on CNN.

The amounts of data collected by the NSA with this program is "staggeringly large", The Guardian says.

In fact, XKeyscore is continually engorged by ongoing data collection to such an extent that it can only be stored for a brief time: three to five days, with metadata staying around for 30 days. The documents claim that at some sites, the amount of data collected per day—20+ terabytes—can only be stored for as little as 24 hours.

One slide shows the agency's method for handling it all: a multitiered system of four separate programs, with one each dedicated to storing metadata, "content selected from dictionary tasked items," user activity metadata, and "unique data from beyond user activity from front end full take feeds".

It is this last subset that is by far the largest, and it is stored in XKeyscore. The Guardian reports that in 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period.

In response to revelations about XKeyscore, the NSA told The Guardian that its activities are "focused and specifically deployed against—and only against—legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests."

Its statement continues:

"XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system.

"Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring."

"Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law.

"These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully – to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad."

Snowden, when interviewed by The Guardian in June, portrayed those limitations and that oversight as, basically, window dressing.

He said:

"It's very rare to be questioned on our searches... and even when we are, it's usually along the lines of: 'let's bulk up the justification'."

What do you think?

Are we sick of PRISM yet, or do we still have room for outrage?

UPDATE: Criticism has immediately greeted the XKeyscore revelations.

Writing for The Week, US journalist Marc Ambinder claims that The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald misunderstood the function and the power of the tool.

Ambinder says XKeyscore is not top-secret, though collection of bulk data is perhaps classified.

Furthermore, he says, XKeyscore is not used for surveillance, and is, rather, simply a search tool for NSA databases that hold data collected through other means.

He writes:

I quibble with the Guardian's description of the program as "TOP SECRET." The word is not secret; its association with the NSA is not secret; that the NSA collects bulk data on foreign targets is, well, probably classified, but at the SECRET level. Certainly, work product associated with XKEYSCORE is Top Secret with several added caveats. Just as the Guardian might be accused of over-hyping the clear and present danger associated with this particular program, critics will reflexively overstate the harm that its disclosure would reasonably produce.

The NSA, for its part, has put out an unsurprisingly "nothing to see here, folks" press release about XKeyscore.

Some commenters are deeming Snowden hyperbolic.

Others have put out a potentially helpful guide (or opinionated spin, depending on your take) to translating the NSA's legalistic declarations.

If there really is nothing to see here, folks, my apologies for swallowing The Guardian's interpretation of XKeyscore.


In the morning,in the evening,ain't we got fun...............