Polished Neg Ev

8/10/2019 Polished Neg Ev

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Contents

Case Construction ......................................................................................................................................... 2

4 Facets of Privacy ........................................................................................................................... 4

When privacy is dismantled ............................................................................................................. 5

The term security is used to eliminate the threats they have created............................................ 6

The term terror is a rhetorical tool .................................................................................................. 7

Terror is a word manipulated to benefit the oppressors actions .................................................... 8

(Rebuttal)Defeats purpose of why this country was founded .................................................................... 9

Infringes on Autonomy .................................................................................................................. 10

Loss of privacy creates and perpetuates power disparities. ......................................................... 11

Terrorism is not severe enough to justify NSA surveillance .......................................................... 12

NSA Surveillance is Inefficient........................................................................................................ 14

NSA surveillance lends itself to use in unethical persuasion ......................................................... 15

Unauthorized collection frequently occurs ................................................................................... 16

The right to privacy is eroding ....................................................................................................... 17

Collecting phone records inefficient .............................................................................................. 18

The NSA fails to differentiate between foreign and American content ........................................ 19

The NSA is only held nominally accountable to Congress ............................................................. 20

Twelve Examples of NSA Abuse ..................................................................................................... 21

NSA Surveillance Encourages Underground Activity ..................................................................... 22

National security is not an indiscriminate pretense ...................................................................... 23

Success of NSA Surveillance Greatly Exaggerated ......................................................................... 24

The FISA Court refuses to keep the NSA in check .......................................................................... 25


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Case Construction

Facets of National SecurityWright University, FBI's foreign counterintelligence mission,http://www.wright.edu/rsp/Security/T1threat/Nstl.htm

The FBI's foreign counterintelligence mission is set out in a strategy known as the National Security

Threat List (NSTL). The NSTL combines two elements:

First is the Issues Threat List -- a list of eight categories of activity that are a national security

concern regardless of what foreign power or entity engages in them.

Second is the Country Threat List -- a classified list of foreign powers that pose a strategic

intelligence threat to U.S. security interests. The activities of these countries are so hostile, or ofsuch concern, that counterintelligence or counterterrorism investigations are warranted to

precisely describe the nature and scope of the activities as well as to counter specific identified

activities.

1. Terrorism

This issue concerns foreign power-sponsored or foreign power-coordinated activities that:

Involve violent acts, dangerous to human life, that are a violation of the criminal laws of the

United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the

jurisdiction of the United States or any state;

Appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a

government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by

assassination or kidnapping; and Occur totally outside the United States or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means

by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to coerce or intimidate, or

the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.

2. Espionage

This issue concerns foreign power-sponsored or foreign power-coordinated intelligence activity directed

at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments, or persons, which involves the

identification, targeting and collection of U.S. national defense information.

3. Proliferation


at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments or persons, which involves:

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to include chemical, biological, or nuclear

weapons, and delivery systems of those weapons of mass destruction; or

The proliferation of advanced conventional weapons.

4. Economic Espionage


at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments, or persons, which involves:

The unlawful or clandestine targeting or acquisition of sensitive financial, trade or economic

policy information, proprietary economic information, orcritical technologies;or

The unlawful or clandestine targeting or influencing of sensitive economic policy decisions.
http://www.wright.edu/rsp/Security/T1threat/Mctl.htm#Militarily%20Criticalhttp://www.wright.edu/rsp/Security/T1threat/Mctl.htm#Militarily%20Critical


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5. Targeting the National Information Infrastructure


at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments, or persons, which involves the targeting of

facilities, personnel, information, or computer, cable, satellite, or telecommunications systems which

are associated with the National Information Infrastructure. Proscribed intelligence activities include: Denial or disruption of computer, cable, satellite or telecommunications services;

Unauthorized monitoring of computer, cable, satellite or telecommunications systems;

Unauthorized disclosure of proprietary or classified information stored within or communicated

through computer, cable, satellite or telecommunications systems;

Unauthorized modification or destruction of computer programming codes, computer network

databases, stored information or computer capabilities; or

Manipulation of computer, cable, satellite or telecommunications services resulting in fraud,

financial loss or other federal criminal violations.

6. Targeting the U.S. Government


at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments, or persons, which involves the targeting of

government programs, information, or facilities or the targeting or personnel of the:

U.S. intelligence community;

U.S. foreign affairs, or economic affairs community; or

U.S. defense establishment and related activities of national preparedness.

7. Perception Management


at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments, or persons, which involves manipulating

information, communicating false information, or propagating deceptive information and

communications designed to distort the perception of the public (domestically or internationally) or of

U.S. Government officials regarding U.S. policies, ranging from foreign policy to economic strategies.

8. Foreign Intelligence Activities

This issue concerns foreign power-sponsored or foreign power-coordinated intelligence activityconducted in the U.S. or directed against the United States Government, or U.S. corporations,

establishments, or persons, that is not described by or included in the other issue threats.


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4 Facets of Privacy

David BanisarAnd Simon Davies, Deputy Director Of Privacy International(PI) And Director

General Of Privacy International And A Visiting Fellow At The London School Of Economics, Fall, 1999in"Global Trends In Privacy Protection: An International Survey of Privacy, Data Protection, And

Surveillance Laws And Developments," The John Marshall Journal Of Computer & Information Law, 18 J.

Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 1

Definitions of privacy vary widely according to context and environment. In many countries, the concept

has been fused with data protection, which interprets privacy in terms of managing personal

information. Outside this rather strict context, privacy protection is frequently seen as a way of drawing

the line at how far society can intrude into a person's affairs. It can be divided into the following facets:

Information privacy ,involving the establishment of rules governing the collection and handling of

personal data such as credit information and medical records; Bodily privacy ,concerning theprotection of people's physical beings against invasive procedures such as drug testing and cavity

searches; Privacy of communications, covering the security and privacy of mail, telephones, email and

other forms of communication; and Territorial privacy , concerning the setting of limits on intrusion

into the domestic and other environments such as the workplace or public space. The lack of a single

definition should not imply that the issue lacks importance. As one writer observed, "In one

sense, all human rights are aspects of the right to privacy."


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When privacy is dismantled

Evgeny Morozovon October 22, 2013 Sprios Smitis, 1985http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520426/the-real-privacy-problem/

He also recognized that privacy is not an end in itself. Itsa means of achieving a certain ideal of

democratic politics, where citizens are trusted to be more than just self-contented suppliers of

information to all-seeing and all-optimizing technocrats. Whereprivacy is dismantled,warned

Simitis, boththe chance for personal assessment of the political process and the opportunity to

develop and maintain a particular style of life fade.
http://www.technologyreview.com/contributor/evgeny-morozov/http://www.technologyreview.com/contributor/evgeny-morozov/http://www.technologyreview.com/contributor/evgeny-morozov/


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The term terror is a rhetorical tool

Greenwald 8/15/12(Glenn, Glenn Greenwald is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of three New York Times Bests elling books: two on theBush administration's executive power and foreign policy abuses, and his latest book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, an indictment of America's two-tiered system of justice. Greenwald

was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I. F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the

winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning. The sham terrorism expert industry,

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/the_sham_terrorism_expert_industry/)

The very concept of Terrorism is inherently empty, illegitimate, and meaningless. Terrorism itself is

not an objective term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized

instrumentand has been used that way ever since. The best scholarship on this issue, in my view,

comes from Remi Brulin, who teaches at NYU and wrote his PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris on

the discourse of Terrorism. When I interviewed him in 2010, he described the history of the term it

was pushed by Israel in the 1960s and early 1970s as a means of universalizing its conflicts (this isnt our

fight against our enemies over land; its the EntireWorlds Fight against The Terrorists!). The term was

then picked up by the neocons in the Reagan administration to justify their covert wars in Central

America (in a test run for what they did after 9/11, they continuously exclaimed: were fighting against

The Terrorists in Central America, even as they themselves armed and funded classic Terror groups in El

Salvador and Nicaragua). From the start, the central challenge was how to define the term so as to

include the violence used by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel, while excluding the violence the U.S.,

Israel and their allies used, both historically and presently.
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/the_sham_terrorism_expert_industry/http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/the_sham_terrorism_expert_industry/


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Defeats purpose of why this country was founded

Shane R. Heskin, legal scholar, 1999, Albany Law Review, High Court Studies: Floridas StateConstitutional Adjudication: A Significant Shift As Three New Members Take Seats On The States

Highest Court, pp. 1573-74

Running through all of these decisions, however, is the courts' deeply imbedded belief, rooted in our

constitutional traditions, that an individual has a fundamental right to be left alone so that he is free

to lead his private life according to his own beliefs free from unreasonable governmental

interference. Surely nothing, in the last analysis, is more private or more sacred than one's religion or

view of life, and here the courts, quite properly, have given great deference to the individual's right to

make decisions vitally affecting his private life according to his own conscience. It is difficult to overstate

this right because it is, without exaggeration, the very bedrock on which this country was founded.


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Infringes on Autonomy

Deborah G. Johnson, Computer Ethics,Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall (1985): 65.

The analysis of Rachels and Fried suggests a deeper and more fundamental issue: personal freedom. AsDeborah Johnson has observed, "To recognize an individual as an autonomous being, an end in himself,

entails letting that individual live his life as he chooses. Of course, there are limits to this, but one of the

critical ways that an individual controls his life is by choosing with whom he will have relationships and

what kind of relationships these will be.... Information mediates relationships. Thus when one cannot

control who has information about one, one loses considerable autonomy."6


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Loss of privacy creates and perpetuates power disparities.

Katrin Schatz Byford, attorney and legal scholar, 1998, Rutgers Computer and Technology

Law Journal, Privacy in Cyberspace: Constructing a Model of Privacy for the Electronic

Communications Environment, pp. 23-24

Once we regard privacy as implicated in the construction and transformation of all social relations, its

value transcends that of a mere personal right to be left alone. Instead, privacy becomes an integral

element of the sociopolitical process. Knowledge is power, and in any social interaction, an imbalance in

the amount and nature of personal information possessed by each party creates and perpetuates power

disparities. In a society where surveillance and the collection of personal information have become

institutionalized, those who control the data collection process have potentially immense social

power at their disposal. But their activities are likely to engender distrust and resentment and, insofar

as surveillance in public settings is perceived as unavoidable, may cause others to withdraw from public

participation altogether. Rather than eliminate the dividing line that separates public from private,information gathering may cause its entrenchment by driving those subject to observation into a strictly

private sphere. As a consequence, access to political power is likely to be left in the hands of those able

to control the collection and distribution of information.


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Terrorism is not severe enough to justify NSA surveillance

Friedersdorf, Connor. The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terrorism The

Atlantic. June 10, 2013.

Of course we should dedicate significant resources and effort to stopping terrorism. But consider some

hard facts. In 2001, the year when America suffered an unprecedented terrorist attack -- by far the

biggest in its history -- roughly 3,000 people died from terrorism in the U.S.

Let's put that in context. That same year in the United States:

71,372 died of diabetes.

29,573 were killed by guns.

13,290 were killed in drunk driving accidents.

That's what things looked like at the all-time peak for deaths by terrorism. Now let's take a longer view.We'll choose an interval that still includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history: 1999 to 2010.

Again, terrorists killed roughly 3,000 people in the United States. And in that interval, roughly 150,000

were killed in drunk-driving accidents, roughly 360,000 were killed by guns (actually, the figure the CDC

gives is 364,483 -- in other words, by rounding, I just elided more gun deaths than there were total

terrorism deaths).

Measured in lives lost, during an interval that includes the biggest terrorist attack in American

history, guns posed a threat to American lives that was more than 100 times greater than the threat

of terrorism. Over the same interval, drunk driving threatened our safety 50 times more than

terrorism.

Those aren't the only threats many times more deadly than terrorism, either.

The CDC estimates that food poisoning kills roughly 3,000 Americans every year. Every year, food-borne

illness takes as many lives in the U.S. as were lost during the high outlier of terrorism deaths. It's a killer

more deadly than terrorism. Should we cede a significant amount of liberty to fight it?

Government officials, much of the media, and most American citizens talk about terrorism as if they're

totally oblivious to this context -- as if it is different than all other threats we face, in both kind and

degree. Since The Guardian and other news outlets started revealing the scope of the surveillance state

last week, numerous commentators and government officials, including President Obama himself, have

talked about the need to properly "balance" liberty and security.


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NSA Surveillance is Inefficient

Bialik, Carl. Ethics Aside, Is NSAs spy Tool Efficient Wall Street Journal. June 14, 2013.

A Ph.D. candidate in computational ecology wrote on his blog last week that even a very accurate

algorithm for identifying terrorist communications could produce about 10,000 false positives for

every real "hit," creating a haystack of false leads to chase in order to find every needle. Several

media reports repeated the figure, and some experts agreed. "The false positives will kill you in this kind

of system," said Bruce Schneier, a security technologist at U.K. telecommunications company BT Group

PLC.

The value of these monitoring tools also depends on another question, though, that can be addressed:

whether sifting for terrorism could be similar to screening for a rare disease. Corey Chivers, the fourth-year graduate student at McGill University in Montreal who wrote the blog post noted above, based his

calculation on assuming the two kinds of screening are identical mathematically. The thinking goes like

this: If you apply a test for something very rare to a population, even if it can be relied on to identify

people who possess certain traits, there are so many more who don't that the false positives will vastly

outnumber the correct hits.

Mr. Chivers said he never intended his proposed ratio to be very precise. Still, he said, his point stands:

"Even if those numbers were vastly different, you're still going to have a large false-positive rate."

Several statisticians agreed with his basic point . Even if the NSA's algorithm "is terribly clever and has

a very high sensitivity and specificity, it cannot avoid having an immense false-positive rate," said

Peter F. Thall, a biostatistician at the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In his arena,

false positives mean patients may get tests or treatment they don't need. For the NSA, false positives

could mean innocent people are monitored, detained, find themselves on no-fly lists or are otherwise

inconvenienced, and that the agency spends resources inefficiently.


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NSA surveillance lends itself to use in unethical persuasion

Richards, Neil."The Dangers of Surveillance." Harvard Law Review 126 (2013): n. pag. Web. 02 Oct.

2013

Governments also use the power of surveillance to control behavior. For example, one of the

justifications for massive CCTV networks in modern urban areas is that they allow police greater

ability to watch and influence what happens on city streets. Certainly, the presence of cameras or police

can persuade citizens to obey the law, but they can have other effects as well. The surveillance studies

literature has documented the use of government CCTV assemblages to direct public behavior

towards commerce and away from other activities ranging from crime to protest. In Britain, where

the science of surveillance-based control is at its most advanced, CCTV operates in connection with

court-ordered injunctions, known as Anti-Social Behavior Orders or ASBOs, to move groups of non-

purchasing teens out of the commercial cores of cities, using surveillance and the power of the state to

ensure that commerce continues efficiently.

The bottom line about surveillance and persuasion is this: Surveillance gives the watcher information

about the watched. That information gives the watcher increased power over the watched that can be

used to persuade, influence, or otherwise control them, even if they do not know they are being

watched. Sometimes this power is undeniably a good thing, for example when police are engaged in riot

control. But we should not forget that surveillance represents a persuasive power shift whether the

watcher is a government agent or a corporate marketer. We have legal doctrines dealing with power

imbalances between both consumers and businesses, such as the doctrine of unconscionability and

consumer protection law. We also have legal doctrines protecting citizens from state coercion, such as

the unconstitutional conditions doctrine and the First Amendments protections of freedom of thought

and conscience. In an age of surveillance, when technological change gives the watcher enhanced

powers of persuasion, it may well be time to think about updating those doctrines to bring them into

the digital age.

This evidence shows how surveillance unjustly concentrates power into the hands of a few. While this

alone doesnt prove anything, it will be useful with the issue of accountability, showing how this new

threat to civil liberties is gaining more power and virtually unchecked by the rest of the government.


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Unauthorized collection frequently occurs

Phillip, Abby D. "Obama vs. Washington Post: Whos Right onNSA Surveillance? ABC News Network,

13 Aug. 2013.

Pressreports that the National Security Agency broke privacy rules thousands of times per year and

reportedly sought to shield required disclosure of privacy violations are extremely disturbing, said

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., noting that instances of non-compliance are required by

law to be reported to Congress.

Well let you be the judge:

Obama:

Well, the fact that I said that the programs are operating in a way that prevents abuse, that continues to

be true, without the reforms.

The NSA audit obtained by The [Washington] Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the

preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally

protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or

violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a

court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders .

This card is extremely impactful. Not only does it present a serious statistic about the unintentional

stealing of legally protected information, but it also shows that the claims being made by the

government about the legitimacy of the surveillance programs are significantly different than what thenumbers show. Additionally, this card can be used to illustrate the fact that the NSA is not giving its due

respect to Congress by disclosing instances of non-compliance with the law. Surveillance is illegally

violating right, being lied about to the public, and undermining the checks and balances of the state.


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The right to privacy is eroding

Risen, James, and Laura Poitras. "N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens." New

York TImes, 28 Sept. 2013.

The spy agency, led by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, an unabashed advocate for more weapons in the hunt

for information about the nations adversaries, clearly views its collections of metadata as one of its

most powerful resources. N.S.A. analysts can exploit that information to develop a portrait of an

individual, one that is perhaps more complete and predictive of behavior than could be obtained by

listening to phone conversations or reading e-mails, experts say.

Phone and e-mail logs, for example, allow analysts to identify peoples friends and associates, detect

where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive

information like regular calls to a psychiatrists office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner orexchanges with a fellow plotter.

Metadatacan be very revealing,said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington

University. Knowingthings like the number someone just dialed or the location of the persons

cellphone is going to allow them to assemble a picture of what someone is up to. Itsthe digital

equivalent of tailing a suspect.

While a "digitial equivalent of tailing a suspect" sounds promising in terms of law enforcement, if this

argument is expanded, the impact of this card is that nearly every individual is being digitally followed by

the NSA at all times due to metadata collection.


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Collecting phone records inefficient

Tom Cohenand Bill Mears, CNN. August 1, 2013. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/31/politics/nsa-

surveillance/index.html.

There is little evidence the U.S. government's sweeping collection of phone records, as revealed by

admitted intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, has helped prevent terror attacks as national security

officials have claimed, a top senator said on Wednesday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy [stated] "If this program is not effective, it has to

end," the Vermont Democrat said of the phone record collection program under Section 215 of the

Patriot Act. He noted that classified details provided by the NSA on how the initiative had been used do

NOT "reflect dozens or even several terrorist plots" that it helped prevent "let alone 54 as some havesuggested."

At Wednesday's hearing, Justice Department and security officials conceded the lack of direct causal

links between the Section 215 phone record collection and thwarted attacks.


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The NSA is only held nominally accountable to Congress

Bendix, Williamand Paul J. Quirk. Institutional Failure in Surveillance Policymaking: Deliberating the

Patriot Act. Brookings Institution. July 2013. Web.

As often occurs in national-security policy, Congress had difficulty exerting influence on issues that

demanded secrecy. If all 535 members routinely participated in classified discussions, damaging leaks

might be almost constant. Instead, Congress normally settles for limited briefings, typically including

only members of the Intelligence committees. On especially sensitive matters, briefings have been

limited to eight congressional leaders. This system has preserved secrecy but often at the expense of

genuine congressional participation. With only four members from each party privy to critical

information, legislators will rarely resist the administration position on a major issue.

As recent reports on the metadata program show, Congress has struggled to conduct effective

oversight of domestic spying. Although Congress received briefings, many lawmakers only learned of

the program when The Guardian ran its stories. Members on the Intelligence committees received the

bulk of the briefings, and provided opportunities for their colleagues in the House and Senate to view

top-secret files. But many skipped the sessions because classified briefings were seen as pointless.

Lawmakers could not take notes, consult experts, or discuss technical matters with staff, thus limiting

their ability to assess classified information.

These restrictions did not apply to members on the Intelligence committees, who were uniquely able to

follow the metadata program. But the Intelligence panels lacked a hands-on familiarity with the legal

issues concerning both records seizures and the FISA Court procedures, because the Judiciary

committees had done most of the work on the Patriot Act. But even if the Intelligence panels had

sufficient legal understanding, they were confined to discuss policy in a classified setting and

therefore were in no position to mobilize Congress against a presidential program that few members

knew about or understood.


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NSA Surveillance Encourages Underground Activity

Ian Duncan and Justin Fenton. Silk Road Arrrest Exposes a Hidden Internet. Tribune Business News.

October 6, 2013. Web. October 7, 2013.

The events of the past week have drawn renewed attention to the underground of the Internet, where

users hide their identities, bounce information around the world to obscure its origin, access hidden

sites with extensions like ".onion" and spend digital currency known as Bitcoins.

But experts say the technology that allows drug dealers and child pornographers to flourish is also a

legitimate protector of Internet privacy and a crucial check on government power. So-called Deep Web

applications have helped activists drive forward the Arab Spring and get around China's Great Firewall.

Some of the tools used by Silk Road and its patrons were developed by the U.S. government, and

observers say they could become increasingly popular here as the populace reckons with revelations of

vast Internet surveillance by the National Security Agency.

"Why wouldn't you be interested in anonymity, with all the recent releases of information that the NSA

has been pervasively tracking almost everything we do online?" asked Michael Taylor, a computer

science professor at the University of California, San Diego. "It gets back to the fundamental freedoms

that Americans tend to believe they have."

This source explains one of the fundamental issues with NSA surveillanceit encourages criminals to go

even further beyond detection. This phenomenon has fueled the Silk Road, an underground online

market for drug dealers and other criminal transactions.


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National security is not an indiscriminate pretense

Walt, Stephen.Sullivan, the NSA, and the Terrorism Threat. Foreign Policy. 6 June 2013. Web.http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/06/sullivan_the_nsa_and_the_terrorism_threat

This claim depends on the belief that jihadism really does pose some sort of horrific threat to American

society. This belief is unwarranted, however, provided that dedicated and suicidal jihadists never gain

access to nuclear weapons. Conventional terrorism -- even of the sort suffered on 9/11 -- is not a serious

threat to the U.S. economy, the American way of life, or even the personal security of the overwhelming

majority of Americans, because al Qaeda and its cousins are neither powerful nor skillful enough to

do as much damage as they might like. And this would be the case even if the NSA weren't secretly

collecting a lot of data about domestic phone traffic. Indeed, as political scientist John Mueller and

civil engineer Mark Stewart have shown, post-9/11 terrorist plots have been mostly lame and inept, and

Americans are at far greater risk from car accidents, bathtub mishaps, and a host of other undramatic

dangers than they are from "jihadi terrorism." The Boston bombing in April merely underscores this

point: It was a tragedy for the victims but less lethal than the factory explosion that occurred that

same week down in Texas. But Americans don't have a secret NSA program to protect them from

slipping in the bathtub, and Texans don't seem to be crying out for a "Patriot Act" to impose better

industrial safety. Life is back to normal here in Boston (Go Sox!), except for the relatively small number

of people whose lives were forever touched by an evil act.

Terrorism often succeeds when its targets overreact, thereby confirming the extremists' narrative

and helping tilt opinion toward their cause. Thus, a key lesson in dealing with these (modest) dangers

is not to exaggerate them or attribute to enemies advantages that they do not possess.


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The FISA Court refuses to keep the NSA in check

Sprigman, Christopherand Jennifer Granick. FISA Court Rolls Over, Plays Dead. Center for Internet

and Society. Stanford Law School. 28 August 2013. Web.http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/publications/fisa-court-rolls-over-plays-dead

So what did the court do when it found out it had been lied to, that purely domestic communications

were fair game, that untold numbers of innocent people were being illegally spied on, and that all the

safeguards in place needed to be rethought?

Nothing, really. The court suggested the NSA should train its analysts to notice when their queries

turned up an MCT i.e., an Internet transaction containing multiple messagesand then to look

carefully at all the by-catch. If existing procedures allowed them to use anything in those purely

domestic messages that they were never supposed to have collected in the first place, great!

Otherwise, only after collection and review, should the information be deleted. The NSA adopted thisapproach, and continues to blithely collect Internet transactions containing wholly domestic

communications between innocent Americans to this day.

So in the face of illegal, unconstitutional and potentially criminal conduct conduct about which the

NSA repeatedly lied to the FISA court the FISA court corrected the problem by requiring banner

warnings that something might be an MCT, and an extra round of review by NSA analysts. The real

problemthat the NSA regularly collects Americansmost private communications that the law does

not permit it to collect and lies about it to the FISA courtwas simply waved away.

In other words, the NSA intentionally collects purely domestic American communications which itassured the American people were off-limits. But the FISA court allows the government to use these

communications to criminally investigate us, and for foreign intelligence purposes.

The harms to civil liberties are already a well-established and often-tread point in discussing NSA

surveillance. This behavior shows a more worrying precedent: supposedly regulatory government bodies

are ostensibly being held subservient to the goals of a single powerful agency. Even if we were to

accept that the NSAsnational security work is worthwhile, the pretense under which this work is

done is unacceptable in any governmental structure that wishes to remain accountable to both itself

and its people.


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