Obama administration says NSA phone snooping is Not Unconstitutional & House to vote on NSA

These people are playing fast and loose with the double speak.

The government has publicly maintained that Americans have no constitutional privacy rights connected to their business records with the phone company.

- More in-depth info on this statement here -->www.npr.org... 4 Exchanges You Should Listen To About NSA Surveillance

The Obama administration for the first time responded to a Spygate lawsuit, telling a federal judge the wholesale vacuuming up of all phone-call metadata in the United States is in the “public interest,” does not breach the constitutional rights of Americans and cannot be challenged in a court of law.

www.wired.com...

See that? --> [ cannot be challenged in a court of law ]

Yet, there are no less than 3 lawsuits against the NSA one by the ACLU and 2 by former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman for 20 billion dollars and seeks to put an end to this illegal surveillance.

To continue:

The suit, brought on behalf of the ACLU’s employees, alleges breaches of the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment and names Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander and FBI Director Robert Mueller, among others.

“… the alleged metadata program is fully consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Most fundamentally, the program does not involve “searches” of plaintiffs’ persons or effects, because the collection of telephony metadata from the business records of a third-party telephone service provider, without collecting the contents of plaintiffs’ communications, implicates no ‘legitimate expectation of privacy’ that is protected by the Constitution,” (.pdf) David S. Jones, an assistant United States attorney, wrote U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley in a Thursday filing.

Because the Fourth Amendment is not breached, it follows that the First Amendment is not violated either, Jones wrote.

www.wired.com...

Go ahead. get Pissed. I am.

But wait.. there's Hope.. ( perhaps if you can trust these grease balls)

The House is supposed to vote sometime this week on repealing the NSA dragnet phone surveillance.

The House is expected to vote later this week on an amendment to a roughly $600 billion defense spending package that would repeal authorization for the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of phone call metadata in the United States.

As part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2014, the lower chamber will vote on a measure proposed by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan). In essence, the amendment to the massive Pentagon spending package would end authority for the once-secret spy program the White House insists is necessary to protect national security.

The amendment is one of about 100 that lawmakers are to consider on topics ranging from Egypt to Syria. The Amash-Conyers amendment could be voted on as early as Wednesday.

The expected vote comes days after President Barack Obama’s administration told a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit about the program that the wholesale vacuuming up of all phone-call metadata in the United States is in the “public interest,” does not breach the constitutional rights of Americans, and cannot be challenged in a court of law because no individual Americans have legal standing to sue.

www.wired.com...

What can I say.. if they don't allow the courts to decide and give We The People a fair haring on this matter then it's all just smoke and mirrors. I love how the administration is so uncaring unfeeling toward We The People's views and not one word of sympathy for what we are going through.

This is not about " business records of the telecommunications companies" That's Bull Crap - they are recording Everything as it happens through your phone and internet.

I was proud to be an American once now I see America is no more.

It's even worse and more insidious that just that.

While we are grumbling about the meta-data,
they are tricking us into implicitly approving of their secret courts.

Secret courts are as un-American as anything I can think of.

With private companies turning over meta-data to the government being about the second worst.


Mike

I think this is a clever tactic by the government! On one hand they say "hey we are doing nothing wrong, dont even try to sue us" and with the other hand sweeping the NSA meta collection practice out the door by amending this bill. This has pissed off the planet. They have to stop doing it and avoid fallout as much as possible. The article in the OP is a brilliant way for the gvmt to do this.

The house might over turn it but then there is the Senate, and then there is the veto power of the POTUS, you do not think they would let NSA be brought down with out a fight do ya? There main goal/ objective is total control over all, no one will be free, weed out the trouble makers and the opponents, then you have free say as to what is right for all.

The absolute paranoia is unmatched by any previous Administration.

I can't understand what would make the Government fear everybody.

This data is not without value. I suspect it is being sold to the highest bidder.

This Congress has a chance to stand up for our Liberty. I am not holding my breath.

Of course he does,it makes us angry and there is his joyful state.Hitting us nasty colonialist ,decadent, yankees.
You'd think he might have figured out exactly what is too far.
We have to do that.
He's lost common, knowledge outside his party programming.

How the hell can they say with a straight face that it's in "the public's interest" to be gathering the data when the public is outraged over the whole scandal to begin with?????

Funkit, people dont get it. I give up.

reply to post by Nephalim


We are living in a 'Virtual Prison'

How did the 'Transparency in the US Govt' that Obananabama preached about prior to being elected, end up being paradoxically what the Govt had intended for the US Citizens. Double speak indeed.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


#8 I see no problem with any of this. Obama promised 'change'. All the TV sets said so.

Warnings were given, in abundance. Just another stage in the bush 911 miracle rocket. Just like the next stooge will be yet another stage.

The smartest are also those who are most capable of 'running things'. In this case, it's the NWO. It's a shame that people confuse ability with evil.

www.youtube.com...

Rick James says coc aine is a hell of a drug....

Wow, what a load of B.S.! This is just another thing that is completely unacceptable, where the people turn a blind eye on. Man, if this crap was ruled constitutional but any republican administration, all the liberals would be furious. Why can't people see through this nonsense?? WAKE UP liberals, get your asses out of the sand and recognize! You're making this whole country look extremely ignorant just cause you like your "super cool" president. Knock it off!!!

Originally posted by snarky412
How the hell can they say with a straight face that it's in "the public's interest" to be gathering the data when the public is outraged over the whole scandal to begin with?????

edit on 24-7-2013 by snarky412 because: spelling

I'll tell you how. Because just like the TM case, the general population goes along with the "cool kids" and blindly accept anything this admin and media is doing cause it's an effing FAD. That's how. No-one knows jack anymore just so long as they follow the "cool crowd". I'll tell you what, I've never seen anything like this and it's very disturbing. :dn

Edit to illustrate how, not why..

Originally posted by Wookiep

Originally posted by snarky412
How the hell can they say with a straight face that it's in "the public's interest" to be gathering the data when the public is outraged over the whole scandal to begin with?????

edit on 24-7-2013 by snarky412 because: spelling

I'll tell you why. Because just like the TM case, the general population goes along with the "cool kids" and blindly accept anything this admin and media is doing cause it's an effing FAD. That's why. No-one knows jack anymore just so long as they follow the "cool crowd". I'll tell you what, I've never seen anything like this and it's very disturbing.

edit on 24-7-2013 by Wookiep because: (no reason given)

I'm with you 100% on that......
Very disturbing for sure

Originally posted by whyamIhere
I can't understand what would make the Government fear everybody.

Not the government really, but the NSA/CIA and other groups behind the government.

Here's the thing that no one is talking about - your elected government is supposed to be the most powerful force within your country. There should never be any group with more power than your elected officials and the courts of your nation. The moment there is a group with power over those you elect, democracy has ended.

There is absolutely no doubt, none at all, that the NSA and CIA are both more powerful than your elected government. These people are capable of monitoring and gathering data about every politician in the country, every judge, every military leader and every candidate. It's also a fact, with no space for doubt, that these organizations are intimately linked with the biggest military and intelligence corporations on the planet.

It doesn't need to be your government fearing the people, it's these corporations and their partners in these all-powerful agencies running the show. However, they do have a willing partner in government, coerced or otherwise, because they also know that when the $ crumbles there will mass civil uprising across the nation. You have almost $17 trillion in debt, and that cannot be fixed without something incredibly dramatic happening, something that would end the currency or render it completely useless in the eyes of the world.

There is also the inevitability of such departments becoming threats themselves. It's a spiral of paranoia within these agencies that leads to an inevitable conclusion. As their dominance grows the people become more suspicious of them, as that suspicion rises these agencies have more people to watch, they grow, their power grows, their critics grow, more "threats" appear, their power grows, the public anger grows... there is only one way this is heading.

Your government is nothing but a Human face on an ogre. They are powerless against such complete and utter control.

People here have been screaming about the NWO for years, and now you're seeing it bare faced. It's not some kind of ancient club of rich people wanting to destroy the world and take everything they can get for themselves, it's an inevitable group of all-powerful agencies increasingly seeing the whole population as a threat, for greed, corruption, dominance and control.

There was a coup in the USA, and the agencies won because they have information that could destroy every politician you have ever backed.

Originally posted by snarky412

Originally posted by Wookiep

Originally posted by snarky412
How the hell can they say with a straight face that it's in "the public's interest" to be gathering the data when the public is outraged over the whole scandal to begin with?????

edit on 24-7-2013 by snarky412 because: spelling

I'll tell you why. Because just like the TM case, the general population goes along with the "cool kids" and blindly accept anything this admin and media is doing cause it's an effing FAD. That's why. No-one knows jack anymore just so long as they follow the "cool crowd". I'll tell you what, I've never seen anything like this and it's very disturbing.

edit on 24-7-2013 by Wookiep because: (no reason given)

I'm with you 100% on that......

Very disturbing for sure

Sorry, but no, this is nothing like the TM case

Public opinion on the NSA powers is almost unanimous as far as I can see. There are occasionally people appearing on the net who say they support it, but most of the time they can also be tracked back to a PR company or are blatantly government shills trying to sway public opinion.

There is a large group who have no opinion, or who are so distracted or uneducated that they really wouldn't see anything bad happening until it's happening to them. But the majority of those who actually understand any of this are completely against it.

Ignore the "polls", because they are complete BS in the majority of cases. Anything put out by Pew (which most of the media agencies use) should be disregarded immediately. It's a global corporation and has links to the US government, it's run by power-mad wealthy individuals with private investments going back decades, and staff there describe it as a dictatorship even suggesting that all information between employees is monitored and all data is checked and then manipulated by senior management before being released.

In my estimation, I would say that 30% of the public are too stupid and apathetic to care, but of the remaining 70%, 50% are thoroughly against it, 10% are for it (because they are complete idiots) and 10% are paid by the government and these agencies to propagate negative PR about Snowden and positive PR about the government and the need to be safe "at all cost".

That's just my perception, but I have read a lot about this scandal and seen thousands of comments, none of the sites where commenting and discussion is going on tells me that the public are just okay about all of this - they're not.

Civil war is coming to a neighbourhood near you soon!

Here in Britain they are reporting it like this...

www.bbc.co.uk...

...but, there is something else going on here in the UK, which I believe is connected to the global surveillance program? I'll come back to it later in this post.

The government has publicly maintained that Americans have no constitutional privacy rights connected to their business records with the phone company.

This particular argument is based on law and legality, only, not on the morality of the practice. Like the following quote, it is 'interpretive' and wholly ignores any sense of moral basis.

David S. Jones

"…the alleged metadata program is fully consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Most fundamentally, the program does not involve “searches” of plaintiffs’ persons or effects, because the collection of telephony metadata from the business records of a third-party telephone service provider, without collecting the contents of plaintiffs’ communications, implicates no ‘legitimate expectation of privacy’ that is protected by the Constitution,”

The pertinent points of this argument are: 1) 'collection of telephony metadata from the business records of a third-party telephone provider'; 2) 'without collecting the contents of plaintiffs' communications'; and 3), 'implicates no legitimate expectation of privacy that is protected by the Constitution'.

Regarding no:1.
I would like to see what steps were taken by any or all 'third-party' telephone providers as a counter-argument to the request for the metadata before they handed it over. In which courts did they argue their case?

Regarding no:2.
If the contents of communications cannot be used it would seem that the collection of metadata is a redundant exercise, but as we know the point of collecting metadata is all about 'identification' of persons (sender and recipient), place, and time of the communication. If persons of interest turn up, they then go to a 'secret court' to gain a warrant so they can then inspect the contents of the communication. A self-serving apparatus such as this is most definitely unconstitutional and against the public's interest of domestic security.

I would suggest, however, that they do check the contents of the communications as a deliberate practice of their industry, and it is by this method that 'persons of interest' do turn up, then they take a trip to their secret court. It is the proving of this which will be the most problematic, and would require another 'whistleblower' to spill the beans.

With regard to 'secret courts'. I'd like to know how this passed through both the Senate and Congress, as it would've needed their approval for funding?

Regarding no:3.

All communication holds an expected protection of privacy between sender/s and recipient/s. Business communications will be upholded as legitimately private by industrial espionage laws which the NSA, CIA, and FBI are committing, and which the telephone providers are conspiring in and guilty of aiding and abetting. Telephone companies can be punished simply by their customer's removal of their patronage and loss of business.

The real problem is that this surveillance issue is not being given a chance to be debated openly and publicly, and the public are not challenging it. I cannot believe that there are no independent constitutional and law scholars not willing to inform the public on this issue...where are they?

Now to England. take a look at this...

www.bbc.co.uk...

...I would suggest that this is a 'test run' for a surveillance practice that if successful would be rolled out across the nation, and from there, across the world.

Yesterday or the day before, I can't recall exactly, NSA had closed door hearings with several key politicians explaining why they don't need to vote against it.

Spook meeting

Of course they went to the "secret FISA court Friday while Obama was distracting the sheep with his trayvon speech. And the royal wedding has been such a wonderful distraction to the sheep as well.

I for one am not "pissed" and PLEASE do not act like it was Obama that started this. It was BUSH. I have nothing to hide and could care less about if I am being tapped or not. Hey make sure you pick up an Xboxone when it comes out. It will not only listen to you, but it will "see" who is in the room with you.