{"id":134259,"date":"2014-07-30T18:50:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T18:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=134259"},"modified":"2014-07-30T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-30T18:50:50","slug":"nsa-court-judges-invest-verizon-surveillance-warps-law-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nsa-court-judges-invest-verizon-surveillance-warps-law-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Court Judges Invest in Verizon While Surveillance Warps Law and Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #000000;\">We must never be surprised when we learn once again that our lawmakers and law interpreters are in bed with the country\u2019s largest corporations\u2013this is how the American government now operates. A July 25\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vice.com\/read\/the-judges-approving-nsa-surveillance-requests-keep-buying-verizon-stock-725\" target=\"_blank\">article in Vice<\/a>\u00a0includes documentation that shows three judges from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, the tribunal that evaluates the legality of the NSA\u2019s practices, own stock in Verizon. Although there doesn\u2019t seem to be a direct financial incentive for judges to allow the NSA to rifle through the data (our data) of a company in which they have invested, it does show the intimate relationship the NSA, the FISA Court and Verizon share.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Specifically, the article states: \u201cOn May 28 last year, Judge James Zagel, a FISA Court member since 2008,\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/234166610\/Zagel-Financial-Disc\" target=\"_blank\">purchased stock<\/a>\u00a0in Verizon. In June of this year, Zagel\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/2014\/June\/14-opa-676.html\" target=\"_blank\">signed off<\/a>on a government request to the FISA Court to renew the ongoing metadata collection program.\u201d The piece goes on to say that FISA Court Judges Susan Wright and Dennis Saylor also own shares in the company, and although Vice wasn\u2019t able to obtain accurate numbers for the amount invested, it appears to be in the thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">The Vice article notes that judges are supposed to remove themselves from cases in which they might have a \u201cfinancial stake in the outcome\u201d or from any case in which they might find it difficult to be impartial.\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2014\/7\/28\/5944825\/the-judges-who-approve-phone-surveillance-are-buying-verizon-stock\" target=\"_blank\">The Verge<\/a>\u00a0also pointed out that telecommunication companies like Verizon receive millions of dollars from the government in their \u201crecord-sharing deals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Cases are supposed to be reassessed when there is evidence of a conflict of interest. Perhaps it is time the government rethinks why it is allowing massive surveillance of its citizens when the\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2013\/10\/polls-continue-show-majority-americans-against-nsa-spying\" target=\"_blank\">majority of Americans<\/a>\u00a0are opposed to that practice and there appears to be a relationship between the court allowing it and the companies harvesting the information.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/nsa_court_judges_invest_in_verizon_while_20140730\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We must never be surprised when we learn once again that our lawmakers and law interpreters are in bed with the country\u2019s largest corporations\u2013this is how the American government now operates. A July 25\u00a0article in Vice\u00a0includes documentation that shows three judges from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, the tribunal that evaluates the legality of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134259","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}