Conservative Musings

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Showing posts with label Jonathan Easley. Show all posts

Monday, July 8, 2013

FISA Court Legality Challenged

Privacy group to ask Supreme Court to halt NSA phone spying

By Jonathan Easley - 07/08/13 08:00 AM ET

A Washington, D.C.-based privacy rights group confirmed to The Hill that they will file an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Monday in an effort to shut down the National Security Agency’s gathering of domestic telephone records.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, said the “exceptional circumstances” surrounding the NSA program requires an immediate response from the nation’s highest court.

EPIC argued that it couldn't go the traditional route through the court system because the lower courts have no authority over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which monitors the NSA programs.

A handful of other law suits were filed in the aftermath of the NSA revelations, but EPIC’s Executive Director Marc Rotenberg told The New York Times, which first reported the move, that his group’s petition would be the first to challenge the FISA court’s ability to approve NSA requests to collect phone record data under the Patriot Act.

In their petition, EPIC argues the secret intelligence court “exceeded its statutory jurisdiction when it ordered production of millions of domestic telephone records that cannot plausibly be relevant to an authorized investigation.”

Last month, former government contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about the government’s secret programs to monitor domestic and foreign communications in an attempt to identify national security threats.

Snowden’s first leak revealed a secret court order that forced Verizon to turn over metadata on phone call numbers and the time and duration of calls for its U.S. customers. That demand was authorized by the FISA court under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Other revelations from Snowden included documents detailing the PRISM program, which gathered Internet traffic data on foreigners, as well as claims the U.S. spied on European Union offices and Chinese civilians.

The administration has defended the phone gathering, noting that the content of communications were not obtained and arguing that the programs have thwarted terror threats and saved lives.

Snowden, who has been charged with espionage, is currently in the transit area of Moscow airport, seeking asylum from a host of countries as he looks to evade a U.S. extradition request.

Friday, June 21, 2013

How Does It Feel To Be In The Soviet Union?

The more we read about the NSA and the FISA Court, the less comfortable we are. It appears as if the National Security Agency can do pretty much what it wants to do and the Court will allow the agency to do it. It does not matter if the issue is Constitutional or within the bounds of our national freedoms, the court allows this agency to proceed. When 99% of all requests are approved, that means the Court is basically a rubber stamp and only get some backbone when the request is so "out there" that it cannot approve.
This is the same sort of justice that was prevalent in the USSR. Are we headed the same way? Unless things change, the answer is a resounding yes.
We need more transparency or we need a supervising agency that has some backbone. We have neither now.
Conservative Tom

New documents suggest NSA can spy without warrant

By Jonathan Easley - 06/21/13 08:24 AM ET

The National Security Agency (NSA) has considerable leeway to use information it obtains without a warrant.

Some of the agency's tactics were revealed Friday after the NSA handed over top secret documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post about its domestic phone and email surveillance programs.

The documents show that the NSA uses a broad, rolling certificate good for one year that allows it to seize phone records and emails for an array of targets that the secretive Foreign Inteliigence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which oversees the NSA’s intelligence programs, doesn’t approve individually, like it would for a warrant.

In addition, if the NSA deems a communication as containing “significant foreign intelligence” or evidence of a crime, it can go after the alleged transgressor even if the communication was obtained inadvertently.

“The new documents show that the NSA collects, processes, retains and disseminates the contents of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails under a wide range of circumstances,” The Washington Post wrote.

The NSA says the program is only for foreign suspects and that it can’t target American citizens without a warrant.

Still, the revelations are likely to fuel calls for oversight and transparency for the programs, which have been the focus of national attention since the two news outlets first published documents from leaker Edward Snowden.

  President Obama will meet Friday for the first time with an independent oversight board tasked with monitoring civil liberties issues within the federal government, as the White House looks to squelch criticism that it’s been complicit in a program that violates the privacy of U.S. citizens.

The president and many lawmakers on Capitol Hill have argued that the policy, which was implemented in 2007, strikes the right balance between privacy and national security, and that it had been helpful in thwarting terrorist attacks.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Was Boston Marathon Their First?

We were wondering why these guys' first attack was at the Boston Marathon. If the following story is correct, it was not their first killing spree.

Conservative Tom

Report: Boston terror suspects linked to triple homicide in 2011

By Jonathan Easley - 05/10/13 01:05 PM ET

Authorities have “mounting evidence” based on “forensic hits” that the two brothers believed responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing were possibly involved in a gruesome, unsolved 2011 triple homicide, ABC News reported on Friday.

According to the report, which cites anonymous law enforcement officials close to the investigation, experts have matched some forensic evidence from the crime scene back to the brothers. Cellphone records also indicate the brothers were in the area when the murders took place.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are believed to have carried out the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured hundreds. Tamerlan, 26, died after a shootout with police, while Dzhokhar, 19, was captured after a citywide manhunt and awaits trial.

Tamerlan’s closest friend, Brendan Mess, was one of three men to die in the 2011 murders. The victims suffered knife wounds to the throat and had marijuana spread over their dead bodies. Buzzfeed reported last month that Tamerlan surprised his friends at the time by not attending the funeral.

Monday, April 29, 2013

White Voters Doomed Romney

Black turnout passed white voters for first time in 2012 election

By Jonathan Easley - 04/29/13 08:31 AM ET

Black voters turned out at the polls at a higher rate than white voters for the first time ever in the 2012 election, according to an analysis conducted by the Associated Press.

According to the report, released on Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would have narrowly defeated President Obama if turnout had more closely resembled the demographic breakdown of the 2004 election.

The Associated Press called the analysis, conducted by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a “tipping point” for black voters.

President Obama won 93 percent of the black vote, 71 percent of the Hispanic vote and 73 percent of the Asian vote in the 2012 election. However, it was the rate of turnout, not the high margins of separation with those groups, that won the election for Obama.

According to the analysis, if white voters and black voters had shown up at the rate they did in 2004, then Romney would have erased the nearly 5 million-vote deficit that ended up separating the two. He also would have won the key battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and Colorado, giving him an Electoral College victory.

One of the primary criticisms of Romney was that he wasn’t a committed conservative, and was thus incapable of turning out those Republicans who remained on the fence. Overall in 2012, voter turnout was 58 percent. That’s down from 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.

How the demographics of the election would shake out was a hotly contested issue during the 2012 campaign. Many conservatives argued that the polls skewed in Obama’s favor because sample sizes were based on 2008, when Democrats — and Hispanics, blacks and young voters in particular — turned out in record numbers.

Those projections turned out to be correct, provoking many Republicans to re-examine their message and policies as they relate to minorities.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has been travelling around the country meeting with minority leaders in 2013, and has pledged to engage minority voters year-round going forward.