{"id":101632,"date":"2013-12-28T00:03:31","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T00:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/n-y-judge-nsa-spying-imperils-civil-liberties-of-every-citizen-but-legal\/"},"modified":"2013-12-28T00:03:31","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T00:03:31","slug":"n-y-judge-nsa-spying-imperils-civil-liberties-of-every-citizen-but-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/n-y-judge-nsa-spying-imperils-civil-liberties-of-every-citizen-but-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"N.Y. Judge: NSA Spying \u201cImperils Civil Liberties of Every Citizen\u201d but \u201cLegal\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Southern District of New York Judge William Pauley III declared<\/a> in a December 27 decision that the NSA surveillance program \u2013 which draws in every American’s telephone records without a warrant or probable cause \u2013 was \u201clegal\u201d even though it \u201cimperils the civil liberties of every citizen.\u201d The decision contrasts sharply with a decision<\/a> two weeks ago by Washington, D.C. District Court Judge Richard Leon that termed the warrantless surveillance program unconstitutional and \u201calmost Orwellian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost Orwellian was no problem for Pauley, who found<\/a> that the Constitution should not get in the way of programs the government claims have worked: \u201cThe question for this Court is whether the Government’s bulk telephony metadata program is lawful. This Court finds it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pauley dismissed the lawsuit by the ACLU despite acknowledging that \u201cThis blunt tool works because it collects everything. Such a program, if unchecked, imperils the civil liberties of every citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metadata is the record created by a telephone call, and includes the number calling and the number called, as well as the time and duration of the call. The NSA also has other programs to collect Internet traffic and other data on Americans, but these other programs were not the subject of the lawsuit dismissed by Pauley.<\/p>\n

Pauley claimed<\/a>, however, that \u201cBulk telephony metadata collection is subject to extensive oversight by all three branches of government. It is monitored by the Department of Justice, the Intelligence Community, the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court], and Congress.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pauley’s claim is not backed up by the facts, nor even by the text of his own 54-page decision<\/a>. The public record is devoid of any serious restrictions on NSA created by the intelligence community or the Justice Department. And the FISC has turned out to be an NSA lapdog, not a watchdog. The Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported<\/a> back on June 9 that \u201cFrom 1979 through 2012, the court overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has rejected only 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance applications by the government, according to annual Justice Department reports to Congress.\u201d Indeed, Pauley’s decision \u2013 despite touting \u201cextensive oversight\u201d from FISA courts \u2013 acknowledged<\/a> \u201cthere is no way for the Government to know which particle of telephony metadata will lead to useful counterterrorism information. When that is the case, courts routinely authorize large-scale collections of information, even if most of it will not directly bear on the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Congress’ surveillance of the NSA, most members didn’t even know about the program until Edward Snowden revealed it to the public.<\/a> Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) noted<\/a> that NSA briefings of Congress amounted to \u201ca totally ridiculous game of twenty questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court decision read more like an op-ed by NSA chief Keith Alexander than a neutral court ruling, as Pauley derided <\/a>\u201cjudicial-Monday-morning-quarterbacking” by the Leon court. Throughout the wordy 54-page decision, Pauley never articulated any objective restriction on a search that would be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Not, at least, an argument on the Fourth Amendment that would be even a “substantial” burden on the government. Pauley noted <\/a>that \u201cTo obtain a section 215 order [under the Patriot Act], the Government must show (1) ‘reasonable grounds to believe the tangible things south are relevant to an authorized investigation.’\u201d But the \u201creasonable\u201d standard is one defined by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. Pauley argued that \u201cUnder section 215, the Government’s burden is not substantial.\u201d But the Fourth Amendment explicitly defines a \u201creasonable\u201d search as one with a warrant supported by an oath, probable cause and particularity in describing what will be found and where it will be found. <\/p>\n

Pauley claimed<\/a> in his decision that \u201cThe collection of breathtaking amounts of information unprotected by the Fourth Amendment does not transform that sweep into a Fourth Amendment search.\u201d Of course, all searches are subject to the Fourth Amendment; the amendment makes no exceptions for non-Fourth Amendment searches. The text of the Fourth Amendment<\/a> reads: <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The New York court’s decision revealed how courts can \u201cinterpret\u201d a constitutional amendment out of existence. Pauley openly acknowledged in his decision that the NSA program does not comport with the Fourth Amendment’s \u201cprobable cause\u201d requirement, writing<\/a> that \u201cAny individual call record alone is unlikely to lead to matter that may pertain to a terrorism investigation.\u201d He also acknowledged<\/a> that the NSA-backed surveillance did not comport with the warrant requirement through National Security Letters issued by the FBI: \u201cAn NSL does not require judicial approval.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pauley based his constitutionality ruling on the claim in his decision<\/a> that \u201can individual has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information provided to third parties\u201d and that \u201cwhen a person voluntarily conveys information to a third party, he forfeits his right to privacy in that information.\u201d Of course, while his court claimed that a person has no right to claim privacy in any third party records voluntarily created, the Federal Trade Commission was busy suing businesses such as Google<\/a> for violating this same non-existent privacy violation. Google paid a $22.5 million fine in 2012 for putting \u201ccookies\u201d on browsers that used its websites after being taken to court by the Federal Trade Commission. So if there’s no legitimate right to privacy, why did the Obama administration \u2013 the same branch of the federal government that claimed there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy in the NSA lawsuit \u2013 sue Google?<\/p>\n

Moreover, Pauley took pains to stress that the NSA keeps the data private, writing that \u201cThe NSA store the metadata in secure networks and access is limited to authorized personnel.\u201d If there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy, why all the secrecy and restricted access?<\/p>\n

Pauley’s claim that the information is \u201csecure\u201d is false on its face. Edward Snowden’s release of the information alone is proof that the information is not secure, and Pauley acknowledged the lawsuit was only possible because of Snowden’s revelations. Snowden was a 27-year-old contractor for Booz-Allen-Hamilton \u2013 not even an NSA employee \u2013 who had access to this sensitive information. And the NSA has admitted a dozen other instances of abuse of that \u201cmetadata\u201d information, in some instances where NSA employees were using the data to spy on their wives and girlfriends. <\/a><\/p>\n

This, of course, puts the lie to Pauley’s claim<\/a> that \u201cthe Government does not know who any<\/em> of the telephone number belong to.\u201d [Emphasis in original.] Of course, if they don’t know to whom any of the numbers belong, how did NSA employees know enough to zoom in on their girlfriends and wives?<\/p>\n

The revelation that NSA employees were using the surveillance program as a crutch for their failing romantic relationships also puts the lie to Pauley’s claim in his decision<\/a> that \u201cThere is no evidence that the Government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The December 27 decision<\/a> did put the USA Patriot Act in its proper light, however. Pauley noted that one provision of the Patriot Act was \u201celiminating the restrictions on the types of businesses that can be served with such orders [broad demands for private information without a search warrant] and the requirement that the target be a foreign power or agent.\u201d In other words, the Patriot Act was written to allow the government to target Americans \u2013 for the first time \u2013 for surveillance. \u201cThe ACLU argues that the category at issue \u2013 all telephony metadata \u2013 is too broad and contains too much irrelevant information. That argument has no traction here. Because without all the data points, the Government cannot be certain it connected the pertinent ones.\u201d Indeed, Pauley stressed that \u201cthe Government invoked this authority to collect virtually all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata.’\u201d<\/p>\n

One can paraphrase Pauley’s decision as essentially one where “one nation under surveillance” is an acceptable way of life, and where the Fourth Amendment is a relic of a bygone era without any “substantial” impact on the federal government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: The New American<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Southern District of New York Judge William Pauley III declared in a December 27 decision that the NSA surveillance program \u2013 which draws in every American’s telephone records without a warrant or probable cause \u2013 was \u201clegal\u201d even though it \u201cimperils the civil liberties of every citizen.\u201d The decision contrasts sharply with a decision two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-101632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}