Electronic Frontier Foundation: Warrantless Wiretapping Case in US.

[SealLion]

This is for all you Yankies out there on SBI. Maybe some of you didn;'t know of this news before, but I found this from a link from Wikileaks.org. One of the supporters of that same site.

Check it out:'


The date on this article is Jan. 2010.

A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails.

Survelience by the state in cooperation with a telecom agency. Maybe the telecom agency was legally enforced to do so or they were asked. Let's have a looksie, shall we??

.....Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America's system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that."

The US isn't the only one susceptible to this.
Think of this on a local scale in your own country happening...which, by the way could.
Both theoretically and practically considering the global climate regarding hyper-security and false pretenses of exactly that same issue.

.....Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a "particularized injury" but instead a "generalized grievance" because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.......the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans' phone records......

Is this dangerous stuff or what??
Yes, it is dangerous.
It's dangerous to your own privacy.
Privacy is treaded upon in many, many countries around the world already.
Canada does it.
A number of the Euro states do it.
A great number of the Arab states, like Jordan do it as well.
There's of course other states like Saudi Arabia which is closely aligned with the US in it's made-for-TV search for non-existant terrorists.

The terrorists do exist.
Dont' get me wrong.
But they exist only in so far as a collusive effort by top-level people subtly encroaching on a course destined to create a controlled chaos.

As for this story and what's been going on in the world over the last number of decades. My bet is this is all connected.


Let's continue with this illegal wiretapping story, shall we...

Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA....

I hope that the Yanks are successful in that endeavor as it could hold a precedence for future illegal activity that could very well be made legal. '
Yes. That's right. .....made to be legal.

And if it can happen down there, this sort of activity can happen anywhere your dreams could take you.
Right in your own backyard, folks.

HEre's the link:]

Scroll down to the following title:

EFF Plans Appeal of Jewel v. NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Case

Press Releases | Electronic Frontier Foundation

[saebrtooth]

Im sure not many people will openly admit, whether they guilty or not guilty of conscious would want to be spied on and an even fewer number will admit to themselves they do not mind.

As long as there are tools to spy there is not much we can do but protest. In the mean time there are thing we can counter spying threats

High Grade data encryption
The Leader in File Encryption Software, Hard Drive Encryption, and Enterprise Security - PGP Corporation
The GNU Privacy Guard - GnuPG.org

From Philip Zimmermann himself, Voip encryption
Zfone Project Home Page

Just too bad that the outdated and cracked GSM standards for mobile phone is still widely used everywhere almost everywhere.

[SealLion]

I don't think I understand this saebrtooth:

Im sure not many people will openly admit, whether they guilty or not guilty of conscious would want to be spied on and an even fewer number will admit to themselves they do not mind.

YOur saying that some people don't mind being spied upon??
Is that what you mean??
If so, how so??

but that link that you gave, that's for files ( am I right??..correct me if I'm wrong here) though rather than for spying on for your electronic communications as what this lawsuit is apparantly over.

Unless your talking about this electronic petition from that same website that gives this link here:

2009 Osterman Encryption Email and File Transfer Report - PGP Corporation

but there's another link from that same website you provided that tells about how to prevent people from having a peek inside your Gmail account.
the link is right on the home page. But for the sake of providing it. Here it is:

How to Prevent People Peeking at your Gmail

Now I wonder how secure that would be and how secure and genuine Google is with that info that is being provided. I would also query that myself.

Who knows if Gmail has some arrangement with a couple of countries security organizations. Maybe China did when Google was there......nothing was ever mentioned and that doesn't mean that it didn't have to be either, yes??


In this day and age, I think that it might be important to question a number of things that are presented. Not that the link for Gmail security is useless.
ON the contrary, probably quite the opposite, I would think, yes??

ONe could still make use of it, I would think.

[saebrtooth]

I don't think I understand this saebrtooth:

YOur saying that some people don't mind being spied upon??
Is that what you mean??
If so, how so??

Sorry maybe my choice of phrasing leaves something to be desired :)

Im sure not many people will openly admit, whether they guilty or not guilty of conscious would want to be spied on

Openly, and in public in order to please some critic there are some whom will say that to protect the country I do not mind if fellow countrymen are spied upon myself includede in order to protect the country for i have done nothing wrong nor will do anything wrong. And who say these things Im sure there are but a few.

How can pleasing of critic be so much the norm - political spin. Governments wanting us to slowly relinquish our freedoms, be tracked and controlled and so they produce spin.

...an even fewer number will admit to themselves they do not mind.

But behind closed doors, out of view from others, there are even fewer people whom genuinely would say to themselves that they do not mind being spied upon. This in contrast to the vocal many they do not wish to be spied upon.

The first was someone trying to seem loyal to their country for the sake of being loyal no matter what without other consideration ie the effects of spying has on the populace and its citizens in effect removing freedom which they thought they had in the country for spying is a under the counter method.

The links are to security appz that we should / may want to use. The more people use them the harder it becomes for Governments to keep tabs on it people.

Sometimes no matter how one protests and petition the governments are still going to spy. If they cant find a legal way they will create a way.

[slikrapid]

looks like this kind of surveillance has been going on for quite a while

NSA Spying

The U.S. government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.

http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying

another article on it:

Where Is the National Security Agency’s ‘Secret Room’ for San Diego?

The room, that is, where the National Security Agency (NSA) secretly intercepts all our internet activities and analyzes them in “real time” for purposes the federal government refuses to reveal.

The existence of such a room in a San Diego telecommunications company was revealed years ago, after one such ‘Secret Room’ was exposed in an AT&T internet hub building in San Francisco in 2005.

what, the media isn't interested in big time stories anymore?

AT&T handles over 300 million phone calls daily.

Not long after the Times broke the story, Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician who worked for the company for over 22 years, walked into EFF’s San Francisco office with a stack of documents. Klein had taken these documents to the LA Times and New York Times previously, but neither newspaper wanted to deal with them.

as expected, monitoring just one provider's customers isn't good enough so they enlarged the spying net reach:

This interception affects not only AT&T customers, but “other companies sending their stuff through AT&T, everyone’s data,” D’Andrade reported. The Folsom Street facility also routes the information of 16 other internet providers, the EFF website states.

In addition, there are “15-20 similar sites, possibly more,” according to the testimony by Mark Klein and J. Scott Marcus, “a former Senior Advisor for Internet Technology at the FCC,” according to the EFF.

So far the EFF has identified other similar AT&T sites with NSA Secret Rooms in SAN DIEGO, Seattle, Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Jose, and Atlanta.

This NSA domestic spying program has been going on not only with the cooperation (and payment) of AT&T, but also Verizon, Bell South, MCI and Sprint.

and the ISPs got a nice bonus for cooperation & keeping their mouth shut about these operations, namely an immunity status, meaning no one can sue them for any kind of privacy breach (a similar immunity has been provided for big pharma companies that produce vaccines, so citizens can't sue them either for any kind of damage that may have happened as a result of vaccinations):

Among the government and telecoms next moves were to have immunity declared for AT&T and the other participating companies. A battle raged for two years, with the immunity measure being withdrawn in Congress repeatedly because the votes weren’t there to pass it.

But the measure (FISAAA-FISA Amendment Act) finally passed in July of last year. Hugh D’Andrade reported that “continuing blog coverage” of the issue to keep it in the public eye kept it from passing sooner.

and here the immunity came in real handy, even with a retroactive effect:

also on June 3, Judge Walker threw out EFF’s Hepting v AT&T lawsuit, along with many other suits filed by the ACLU, against a number of telecoms for cooperating in the NSA spy program. Walker cited the telecom retroactive immunity law passed by Congress as the reason for his dismissals.

same result, another reason/excuse, the spying program continues as before

and btw another accusing argument that adds to those claiming obama is in effect merely continuing previous usa governmental goals (as bush & his predecessors did too)

In September ‘08 the EFF filed another federal lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, seeking to hold the agency responsible for alleged illegal domestic spying on millions within the borders of the US.

But on April 3 of this year the Obama administration filed a motion to dismiss this suit, also being heard by Judge Vaughn.

In its motion the Justice Department “claims …that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged ‘state secrets’…essentially the same arguments made by the Bush administration three years ago,” according to the EFF website.

“President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties,” said EFF Senior Attorney Kevin Bankston. “But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration’s cover-up of the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans and insisting that the much publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a ‘secret’ that the cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like déjà vu all over again.”

http://obrag.org/?p=8157

you may have also noticed that none of these lawsuits would have been filed otherwise (until eff & similar non-profit organizations stepped up to do it), so where is the judicial oversight that is supposed to be independent, who should otherwise be in charge to speak up/act against actions that endanger large groups (if not all) of citizens & their rights when cases of, as they put it:

"generalized grievance"

appear, surely such things shouldn't be left to poorly or sometimes inadequately financially backed up non-profit organizations, that in effect may or may not find out about the abusive practice, and if they do find out, then may or may not have the resources to pursue in a legal way against the abusive practice, where is their official backup, one that monitors such activities of possible citizen rights abuse?

In this day and age, I think that it might be important to question a number of things that are presented.

so true, even all those programs offering encryption - can anyone be sure they actually haven't firstly been tested by the military or nsa & such, in order to make sure they can bypass it when necessary, after which the apps got green light for entering consumer market?

[SealLion]

That was extremely interesting, I found in reading slik.

So yes, where is the back up for non-porfit organizations that demand better transparency from governments. Any government in any country for that matter.

The Yanks have got quite a potato to deal with here.

But like I said, and believe. This could also very well happen in other western nations (which already is, such as Germany for example---and it will. It'll just take on different forms and legal interpretations and imposed reasons for the existence of such activity to occur in another country. ) and could be very well set as a precendent in other nation states.

They could use this legal binding there, as an example and institute it into thier own legal system. Never mind what any constitution says.

Constitutions are just meaningless pieces of paper to be used as toilet-paper if domestic spying organizations had their way.

As for the american's new president from an outsider's perspective, not a whole lot has changed. Nor will it change.
It does not make a single bit of difference who is in office. Not one single bit.
Party affiliations are just there to help differentiat to the voting public who they'd like to see in office b/c they feel closer to this or that kind of government.

To organizations that have the real power, visible governments are just the officiating party for rule. Basically....a puppet.