R.I.P. Amerika the Beautiful

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

Reflections on the FISA Court:

there is some reason to be concerned about the makeup of the FISA court. Of the 11 judges currently serving on the court, ten were initially appointed to the federal bench by Republican presidents. Only one, Judge Mary McLaughlin, was appointed by a Democratic president- Bill Clinton. The reason for this seems pretty clear, and it is troubling. Under the FISA Act, the Chief Justice appoints the members of the FISA court. Since 1978, when the FISA court was created, every Chief Justice of the United States -- Warren Burger, William Rehnquist and John Roberts - was appointed by a Republican president. At present, approximately 50 percent of federal district court judges were appointed by Republican presidents and 50 percent were appointed by Democratic presidents. But on the FISA court, 91 percent were appointed by Republican presidents and only 9 percent were appointed by Democratic presidents.

This is quite disturbing in terms of the choices made by Burger, Rehnquist and Roberts, who are not supposed to be influenced by partisan or ideological considerations. Moreover, this matters. Judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents differ quite significantly in their judicial approaches. To cite just one example, among Supreme Court justices appointed in the last 30 years, those appointed by Republican presidents support civil liberties claims roughly 34 percent of the time, whereas those appointed by Democratic presidents support such claims approximately 74 percent of the time.

FORMER NSA JUDGE: The Spying Court Should Not Be Approving Dragnet Surveillance

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/former-nsa-judge-says-court-is-flawed-2013-7#ixzz2YpOUzcGD

Reform the FISA Court: Privacy Law Should Never Be Radically Reinterpreted in Secret

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

NY Times: The Laws You Can’t See

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

 

[krzykat]

Ordering a Pizza in 2015

 

[PBX@Home]

Ordering a Pizza in 2015

That was great! and to think someone spent the time putting all that together.

 

[wardmundy]

 

[wardmundy]

What tangled webs we weave...

Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft | ArsTechnica

 

[leemason]

Watched "Enemy of the State" again last night. Great film! I guess we didn't really when it came out just how true it would turn out to be!

 

[matthew]

Honest to goodness, if you had the remotest thought that this wasn't happening, I have several bridges to sell you. Since the earliest electrons flowed through the Internet, people have been aware of projects such as Echelon (remember all the weird .sigs with machine gun, terror, etc keywords in them?). I've had to fly into Alice Springs in central Australia several times, and you all but fly over Pine Gap, a massive domed satellite receiver array run by the USofA. It isn't a NASA style facility, either. We knew of the NSAKey in Windows back in the 90s. What other clues did people need? All the leaker fellow did was state the obvious.

 

[leemason]

It's interesting how they try to play down what they can do with "we couldn't possibly listen to every conversation, imaging how many people it would take to do that". Well I think we can see now that they can and they do! Imaging what they can do if the lil' old open source community can do what it does with very few resources in comparison. Yes I know the Open Source has a lot of "person power" but no great budget to speak of!

 

[wardmundy]

The bunny just took another hop...


And you'll love this one...

Does the NSA collect geolocation data? Answer: "We are not collecting that data," Inglis said, "UNDER THIS PROGRAM."