right now, there is a debate on a small section of the Patriot Act in the US, and best option removes the authorization of the US NSA wiretapping in the world. Both answers in the debate are wrong. No change in the law will stop the behavior of the NSA: they were eavesdropping like this since at least 1976 and do not care about changes to a law of 01. It is to be the most convenient justification of the day. If this justification is removed, there will be countless others.
The entire debate is a red herring. Getting rid renew or Article 215 of the Patriot Act, rewriting with a more limited scope, if not get rid of the Patriot Act in its entirety, absolutely nothing to change the behavior of the NSA.
The NSA is simply choosing to justify his wiretapping conversations and bulk metadata collection with the Patriot Act currently. If this particular avenue is closed, there will be another justification. And another. And another. And at the end of the day, they will both know and do not care that they break all.
Let me tell you about an event in 08, when I was on the same expert panel that the local supervisor of the NSA activities. (It was not his official title, of course. He was director of the Swedish FRA, which is the Swedish equivalent of the US NSA, but the former has acted like a local accomplice to this latest). In all cases, it is difficult to get much earlier in the intelligence community.
When lunch arrived at the seminar of the event, that person joined me at my table. We were the only technical geeks out there, it makes sense in a weird sort of way. A proposed Swedish equivalent of the Patriot Act, but on steroids, has been discussed everywhere at the time. (Among other things, it expressly authorized the NSA to analyze Swedish and maintain a database on sexual orientation of individuals, to give you an idea of how far it went - no, okay.)
I told him that many people at the time believed that the FRA had already bugging all loose son.
"Oh no," he said. "We do not do it. We're listening [everything sent over] satellites. We have done since 1976. This violates both the Swedish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights," he sneered.
I got the impression that he was actually boasting, might try to recruit me, maybe try to find technical hand. But at the time, he did not know that I record the conversation.
I sent the recording to the press after. So what does that happen? Was there an outrage? A storm? Is it provokes political pressure to cease violations?
No. The press does not mention at all, with one exception - an article in Computer Sweden, a technical magazine for IT professionals. There was not a single mention in traditional oldmedia. Not one.
There was a lot of blogs wrote about it (in Swedish), though.
The official justification for wiretapping all calls that have been transmitted by the satellite link is an obscure radio law, who said that no one can be limited to pick up radio waves air. However, this law was intended to cover radio broadcasts, and certainly not the construction of a huge satellite dish twice alongside the recipient of satellite dish, and listening to a copy of every sent even if the transmission is be found radio waves. Lawyers have just given an empty Nope official excuse for this, talk about expectations of privacy, as the FRA overdirector said he knew to be the case in a recorded conversation.
Notice of this episode that although is an official external legal justification, the top brass know very well that what they are doing is completely illegal at all levels. More importantly, you will also notice that they do not care a bit it is illegal for the simple reason that they should not care.
It boils down to this :. When the problem is that the NSA and their accomplices agencies do not care a bit what the law says, the solution can not be to change what the law says
At the end of the day, there are exactly two ways to stop the bulk wiretap NSA correspondence: ..
you can cut their funding
Or you can cut their electricity
any other tweak to their environment, including their legal, has no effect.
0 Komentar