Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by BobaFloutist on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @06:17PM (#43348237)

The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law. It makes no sense for the requirements to get a wiretap to be so stringent but the requirements to monitor someone's internet traffic to be nonexistent, just because it's laundered through "intelligence gathering" and you argue it's therefore not "law enforcement."

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by neil_s_anderson on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @06:26PM (#43348316)

The point of bulk data collection is to be able to, in effect, take a wiretap in the past before you knew what you'd need to be wiretapping in the present, by querying the bulk datasets for communications between specific endpoints within specific points in time.

As time travel doesn't exist, this is the next best technology available.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by ziddoap on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @06:40PM (#43348461)

I think we all know that. We, or I at least, don't agree with it.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by neil_s_anderson on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @06:44PM (#43348490)

You don't agree with monitoring the communications of adversaries at all, or you don't agree with doing the equivalent for communications made in the recent past?

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by ziddoap on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @06:46PM (#43348501)

I don't agree with mass collection of data of non-guilty/non-suspected citizens for "just in case" situations in the future.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by t-3 on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @07:56PM (#43348969)

When the country's own citizens are the "adversaries", that's a highly fucked up government and government agency. If the people are the enemy the country is dead.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by akomtu on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @07:58PM (#43348993)

And the adversaries is the entire nation at this point.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by netsharc on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @08:29PM (#43349198)

Ah, the East German State Police mentality...

Sadly, governments end up becoming corrupt. In one formerly free nation (or at least it was one that obnoxiously bragged about being one), data about women's periods became weaponized in a witchhunt against abortions.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by lern_too_spel on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @09:40PM (#43349571)

> The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law.

It also violates the courts' understanding of the law. That's probably why one such program was shut down prior to the Snowden leaks and definitely why the other was shut down after.

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Re:Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spyi... by energy123 on Wednesday March 12, 2025 @10:15PM (#43349764)

If it's illegal then why aren't the courts stopping it? Has there been a court case? What did the ruling say? Details would be useful.

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