2013年11月18日星期一

The edge of the abyss: exposing the NSA's all-seeing machine

The Church Committee, established in 1975 to audit the intelligence community following Watergate, learned that in the 1950s the CIA and the FBI had intercepted and collected the contents of over more than 215,000 pieces of mail belonging to US citizens. And indeed, surveilling US citizens is in the NSA's pedigree; recently, declassified documents revealed that Martin Luther King Jr, Muhammad Ali, and other prominent Americans were targets of NSA surveillance during the Vietnam War, from 1967 to 1973.The current chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Dianne Feinstein, is one of the most ardent supporters of NSA bulk surveillance and originally downplayed the Verizon leak as business-as-usual. 

In October, Feinstein took out an op-ed in USA Today,Groupon is gaining a true strategic advantage by providing its national merchants with access to DMAA first party redemption data that they can't get anywhere else, said Catherine Tabor, CEO and founder of Sparkfly. arguing that metadata deserves no Fourth Amendment protection. On October 31st,It is no coincidence that all the new restaurants v just mentioned, including Mr. Maws's, are more casual and less expensive than their flagships.Best Canoe for Sale Feinstein passed an NSA "improvement" bill in Congress offering no real reform; in fact, the Feinstein bill legitimizes the mass data collection that has so far been justified in secret.Some lawmakers, however, are working to reverse mass surveillance of US citizens. On October 29th, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Patriot Act co-author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R, WI) introduced the "Freedom Act," which would end bulk data collection by rewriting Section 215 of the Patriot Act and creating new limits on FAA Section 702. Others, like Senator Ron Wyden, (D, OR), have issued repeated warnings about the NSA's capabilities. "The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed," Wyden said earlier this year. "What happens to our government, our civil liberties, and our basic democracy if the surveillance state is allowed to grow unchecked?" 

Finally, the judicial branch, which has secretly authorized mass NSA spying over the past decade in collaboration with the executive and legislative branches, could play a role in reform. While some tech companies are currently suing the government to release gag orders preventing them from informing customers about how many data requests the government makes, such efforts are largely cosmetic, and won't impact data collection. The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Knowledge, the Open Technology Institute, Free Press,Volunteers are an essential part of Targa, he says, "and without them there is sup paddles no way that an event like this can run smoothly. Human Rights Watch, and others have sued to end the telephone dragnet, arguing that the collection violates the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

没有评论:

发表评论