Not Getting It

5 Comments

1. 

   TarheelDem on May 22, 2014 at 10:49 pm

   From emptywheel:

   I fear, reading this Kevin Drum post, that my explanations of why USA Freedumber will not end what you and I think of as bulk collection have not been clear enough. So I’m going to try again.

   It is now, with the bill in current form, a 4-part argument:

   1. The bill uses the intelligence community definition of bulk collection in its claim to end bulk collection, not the plain English language meaning of it
   2.The bill retains the “relevant to” language that got us into this problem

   3. The “selection terms” it uses to prevent bulk collection would permit the collection of vast swaths of innocent people’s records
   4. Such a reading would probably not rely on any new FISA Court opinion; existing opinions probably already authorize such collection

   The intelligence versus the plain English definition of bulk collection

   This entire bill is based on the intelligence community definition of bulk collection, not the common English definition of it. As defined by President Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive on SIGINT, bulk collection means,

       “the authorized collection of large quantities of signals intelligence data which, due to technical or operational considerations, is acquired without the use of discriminants (e.g., specific identifiers, selection terms, etc.).”

   Bulk collection, as defined by the intelligence commonly, only means collection that obtains all of a particular type of record: all phone records, all Internet metadata, all credit card records. Anything that stops short of that – all 202 Area Code phone records, all credit card records buying pressure cookers, all Internet metadata for email sent to Yemen — would not count as bulk collection under this definition.

   A more commonsense meaning of bulk collection would be the collection of large volumes of data, sweeping up the data of totally innocent people, on which to do further (sometimes technically intrusive) searches to find the data of interest.

   And that just handles the first point Marcy makes.  It is legislative sleight-of-hand that results is little restriction of what NSA can do but looks pretty for public consumption.

2. 

   nicteis on May 22, 2014 at 11:25 pm

   Front pager Joan McCarter over at the Great Orange Satan notes one change:

   The White House, however, convinced lawmakers to redefine “specific selection” from a uniquely described “person, entity or account” by adding the qualifier “such as” so that the provision reads ” a “discrete term, such as a term specifically identifying a person, entity, account, address or device.”

   That opens the barn door wide. The NSA might feel such a term as “New York City resident” is a term specifically identifying something. It probably wouldn’t bother to ask the FISA court whether it agreed – but this FISA court might very well agree.

   And that’s just one of the changes, apparently. Very unclear how this works out to better than nothing.

3. 

   TarheelDem on May 23, 2014 at 9:03 am

   Short version: It still flagrantly violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and the UN Declaration of Human Rights when it comes to the issuing of general warrants for searches and seizures.

   When progressives begin to think the Bill or Rights and the UN Declaration of Human Rights to be quaint or impractical, we are in deep intellectual trouble in this country.

   • 

     The Voice In The Wilderness on May 23, 2014 at 5:45 pm

     We are in deep trouble, THD. AG is right about that. My disagreement with him is mostly that his solution would put us in even deeper.

4. 

   indycam on May 23, 2014 at 2:38 pm

   Some people will not be satisfied until all the buildings of the NSA have been razed, the employees garroted, and a pyramid of salt heaped over the rubble as a visual tribute to the awesome power of the credulous Left.

   As there is no political reward in pandering to these types, Congress is free to strike a balance in securing our civil liberties while protecting our communications infrastructure from the very real threats that these types conveniently ignore; in performing its duties, Congress is completely justified in ignoring the squeals of outrage unleashed by the Irreconcilables.

   And people wonder why the left is never taken seriously.