October 3, 2011 FISC Opinion Holding NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional (Full Text)

[Fearless]

Just released to the public today here is the October 3, 2011 FISC Opinion Holding NSA surveillance unconstitutional

Document is posted in .pdf form at the link below:

https://www.eff.org/document/october-3-2011-fisc-opinion-holding-nsa-surveillance-unconstitutional


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Even their own damn hand-picked court finds it unconstitutional.

So chew on that.

[geek tragedy]

1. They found most of it constitutional, with certain practices constituting less than 10%

of their volume to be unconsitutional, because those practices were only 99.9% domestic-communications free.

It was sternly worded, but not much of a sanction.

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2. Ergo... spying on American citizens within the nation is unconstitutional.

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3. Yes. Very clear on that.

But, the opinion strongly suggests that they weren't spying on anywhere near all Americans, and that those that were 'spied upon' were due to inadequate search term controls rather than willful snoopiness.

That doesn't mean there weren't other abuses by the NSA that the court never found out, but this is a mixed bag.

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4. This means that there is legal basis against spying on American citizens

Whether it's never happened, happened 0.00000001% of the time, or millions of times.

It is unconstitutional, therefore not legal, and should be prosecuted as such.

[geek tragedy]

5. I don't think anyone with a reasonable mind would disagree

with that.

Though prosecutions are a different matter--if someone just screws up a piece of computer code, not likely to rise to a criminal offense.

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7. In cases of proven accident

It would be prudent to put checks into place to prevent such things from happening again.

In cases of criminal negligence, if they're giving Manning 35 years, I'd be interested in seeing what they would receive.

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8. When they don't declassify documents proving otherwise

Would that not be the logical suggestion.

Also would one single declassified opinion not end the debate on either side as to whether they are rubber stamp or not? One doesn't seem like a representative sampling to me. You?

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10. And?

That has nothing to do with what I said. Of course warrants in general can be denied. We're speaking of warrants GRANTED that were deemed unconstitutional.

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12. For heaven's sake no.

The court authorized a warrant. The warrant was deemed violated by that same court after it was implemented.