That's a bold assertion not borne out by the facts. Examples:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/judge-deals-nsa-defeat-bulk-p...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/indepe...
But 15 Federal district court judges have approved the NSA actions as part of the FISA courts. That a single federal district court disagrees isn't a huge deal.
The third party doctrine is very clear. Records about you do not carry a reasonable expectation of privacy. The judge who ruled against the NSA wants to change the law. Maybe the courts will change the law. SCOTUS has disfavored mass surveillance tactics in the recent past.
But right now, it is legal.
"The holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed."
Sure it is - that sort of disagreement makes it unsettled law, which is where SCOTUS steps in. Last year they (thankfully) ruled that cell phones can't be searched in most circumstances without a warrant, and I'd expect at least a few of the numerous suits that popped up in the wake of the Snowden leaks to wind their way to Court eventually.
Right now, large parts of the NSA's actions are of disputed legality. We'll see what the justices say.
The SCOTUS is more likely to take a case where there is a split in the case law among the federal circuit courts (appellate courts). A split among federal district courts (trial courts) does not really have much significance.
It will have go to the DC circuit before it carries any real weight.
A single judge goes off reservation pretty frequently.
Legality of government actions is utterly, brutally, critically, inhospitably irrelevant when compared to what is ethical. A dragnet isn't ethical. A police state isn't ethical.
Furthermore, there wasn't ever a public debate over whether people wanted the dragnet or not-- it was done in secret, then exposed, then legalized after it was exposed to the public, regardless of any public comment for or against it.
As far as "political problems" go, I'd say we all should have major political problems with the government of the US, which hasn't thought twice about breaking all of its own "rules" about the privacy, civil, or human rights of citizens.
I'm sure many people who work for the Department of Defense think the Iranian Nuclear deal is wrong. Should they be able to leak a bunch of classified information to sour it? I'm sure they'd believe making peace with, in their minds, genocidal maniacs with nukes is completely immoral.
>Furthermore, there wasn't ever a public debate over whether people wanted the dragnet or not-- it was done in secret, then exposed, then legalized after it was exposed to the public, regardless of any public comment for or against it.
Were you born the day before Snowden leaked? We've been having §215 arguments since the day the Patriot Act passed. It's been debated in Congress every time the Patriot Act comes up for re-approval.
Congress has a large debate about FISA and warrent-less wiretaps every year from 2006-2008, with amendments to the FISA act ever time.
Congress is a manifestation of the will of the people on the United States. You might be pissed off about what they do on our behalf but we elect them.
You may think it was moral to leak, but that isn't germane.
Without Snowden, Ellsberg, Drake, Binney, Manning, and the other leakers, we would still be completely and utterly in the dark about most of the malicious things our government is doing. It is solely by these people's sense of moral agency that the wrongdoings came to light! If we left it up to the government to regulate itself within the rules, we would absolutely never have any kind of citizens oversight specifically because they make their own set of rules, and those rules include keeping us in the dark for the purposes of making things run smoother.
As far as claiming there was some kind of debate over the dragnet-- no, some representatives quibbling about the wording from time to time does not count as citizen oversight. The representatives didn't even know how deep the NSA rabbit hole went. They didn't even understand the interpretations of the Patriot act that were being used to justify the spying. They were almost as clueless as we were. So no, there was no debate, no oversight, no way for the citizenry to say "stop" before the fact, and so far, no listening to their cries after the fact.
You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.
It was a moral necessity to leak, it isn't germane to talk about legality in the context of morality. We either have leakers, or we're passengers to the system, which doesn't sound like a democracy to me.
As the GP comment pointed out, people knew about these NSA programs in particular before Snowden. I certainly did. Just because you weren't paying attention to these issues until they were attached to a charismatic personality doesn't mean that no one else had any knowledge of them.
Congress did indeed debate the details of the Patriot Act. Once again, just because you find it boring to watch CSPAN doesn't mean that the issues weren't debated in open forum. You're conflating your lack of awareness with a secrecy that didn't exist.
The FISA court operates how it's supposed to. It approves the majority of requests because prosecutors can thoroughly evaluate each case before bringing it before the court. They approve everything because prosecutors can request that cases be strengthened before they're even presented.
The bottom line here is that all branches of the government approved of these programs. That's how our system works. If you don't like it then propose a new system, potentially one where every decision has to live up to your personal moral code of righteousness. Until then, we'll stick with doing the best that we can to make the right decisions using the process outlined in the constitution.
Prosecutors can do that for non-secret courts, too, yet their requests are often denied. It's very unlikely that prosecutors take special extraordinary measures to never present a mediocre case to the court.
At the very least, I'd like to see vetted, security-cleared lawyers from the ACLU/EFF/etc. permitted to play the adversarial role found pretty much everywhere else in our legal system.
If Snowden didn't want to be involved in the NSA, he could have quit.
But like I said, you can't let individuals determine government policy by themselves. Otherwise we'd have no ability to keep information classified.
You can come up with a hypothetical that would justify leaking confidential materials, but I would strongly disagree that Snowden or Manning meet that standard.
If Snowden leaked that the US had an extermination camp, yea I'd support him. But the NSA surveillance programs are nothing like that.
The NSA isn't doing something that completely shocks the worlds conscience. The are following the laws Congress wrote for them. Snowden and other civil libertarians are outraged, but so what. You don't get to declassify stuff because it is against your politics.
The law shouldn't and doesn't give you cover for that sort of political action. How could it? Can a pro-peace activist leak military plans? Can a pro-Palestine activist leak Israeli diplomatic cables?
The standard can't just be "one guys thinks this is immoral."
>You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.
Nobody ever has oversight over courts, directly. They are unelected on purpose to protect them from political bias. The People have oversight by writing the laws. If the People don't want FISA courts, ban them.
No warrant proceeding is in open court. You get a magistrate judge to issue you one in private.
As to 95%, that could just as easily be evidence that the DOJ is only requesting warrants in situations that are legitimate. Recall that they are only handing out ~3000 a year (probably many against the same person and many against foreigners). So it isn't like the DOJ is doing this in a dragnet fashion. Also, the FISA court requires substantive revisions of about 25% of those it approves.
The 95% rate is easily just proof that the government isn't abusing the system.
One last try: Snowden leaked information which tells us that the NSA effectively has the power to blackmail anyone in the US or elsewhere. Via whistleblower Russ Tice we know that the NSA was spying on Obama starting from 2004. Anything Obama has done, the NSA has known. Doesn't that seem like it creates an avenue for major abuse?
This sure seems like a backdoor to democracy which would justify letting the members of the democracy know, right? Or is it still more important to maintain confidential materials when the materials show that democracy has a workaround via surveillance?
The Snowden leaks made it clear that statements given to Congress by James Clapper were false. If we want Congress to act on our behalf, they must be able to regulate these agencies.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/...
This article is dated February 15th, 2002, and one of its references is a now dead link to an article entitled "Library computers targeted in terrorism investigation" from the Sun Sentinel dated September 18, 2001.
Much of what he released was unknown to the public. I think that his stated purpose was to enable and spur public debate on those previously unknown practices.
The only real surprise to me was the metadata they were using.
But even then we knew about §215 of the patriot act.
The only illegal things he disclosed was that some NSA agents/employees illegally used their tools to track ex-gfs and stuff.
All the rest is completely legal. The country had a public debating about warrantless wiretaps and congress wrote laws about it. The NSA follows those laws.
He released the information because he had a political problem with them. That cannot be allowed. I wouldn't call it traitorous, but it was a massive violation of state secrecy laws.
Though, some of his actions since are at least flirting with traitorous behavior. He has released information about US spying on other governments. What the fuck did he think the NSA did? That was its raison d'être.