Who you are is defined by what you do, not what you promise.

[Gravitycollapse]

An essential part of determining the reliability of a person is examining the disparity between those two things.

To say you are okay with President Obama and his administration spying on citizens because you trust him as a person is to ignore the fact that we can only really determine the character of an individual by what he or she does when given the power to act on what is right or what is wrong.

Trust the state only as far as you yourself can comprehend the power it wields. If the extent of such power is no longer known, if power is veiled behind the jingoism of "state secrecy," then we no longer possess a reliable means of establishing or maintaining public trust in elected officials. When we fall back on the argument that it is better for us not to know, that we can simply dismiss accountability in the name of "trust," then we are entering dangerous territory.

[Tx4obama]

1. The Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that phone records are not protected by the 4th amendment

Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the installation and use of the pen register was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. The pen register was installed on telephone company property at the telephone company's central offices. In the Majority opinion, Justice Blackmun rejected the idea that the installation and use of a pen registry constitutes a violation of the "legitimate expectation of privacy" since the numbers would be available to and recorded by the phone company anyway.

Background
In Katz v. United States (1967), the United States Supreme Court established its "reasonable expectation of privacy" test. It overturned Olmstead v. United States and held that wiretaps were unconstitutional searches, because there was a reasonable expectation that the communication would be private. The government was then required to get a warrant to execute a wiretap.

In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a pen register is not a search because the "petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company." Since the defendant had disclosed the dialed numbers to the telephone company so they could connect his call, he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers he dialed. The court did not distinguish between disclosing the numbers to a human operator or just the automatic equipment used by the telephone company.

The Smith decision left pen registers completely outside constitutional protection. If there was to be any privacy protection, it would have to be enacted by Congress as statutory privacy law.

-snip-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

-snip-

Thus, some Supreme Court cases have held that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in information you have "knowingly exposed" to a third party — for example, bank records or records of telephone numbers you have dialed — even if you intended for that third party to keep the information secret. In other words, by engaging in transactions with your bank or communicating phone numbers to your phone company for the purpose of connecting a call, you’ve "assumed the risk" that they will share that information with the government.

-snip-

Full page here: https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/privacy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101665881

[Gravitycollapse]

2. I do not care about the legality of the surveillance.

And it should be obvious to anyone who has read my OP that I am not attempting to argue that what the Obama administration is doing is illegal.

[Tx4obama]

3. In my opinion it is 'not' spying.

The NSA is keeping a backup of the meta-data that the telecoms delete from their system every 30 - 90 days.

If the NSA didn't store the data it would be lost forever.

The majority of the data that the NSA receives from the telecoms isn't even used.

Last year only somewhere around 1,500 requests were filed with the FISA Court to be searched - that's like less than 5 per day.

I think when all the smoke clears folks will see that this is nothing like 1984

[Gravitycollapse]

4. It is none of the government's business who I choose to call.

Excepting an instance where it can be clearly demonstrated that I have committed a crime and that the knowledge of my telephone calls would be relevant to a further investigation and/or indictment.

Data mining millions of phone calls with no such exception is unethical and intrusive. And, as far as I'm concerned, a reasonable violation of the 4th amendment, regardless of the SCOTUS decision. I will not argue that it is illegal because it is legal. I am arguing my opinion of the matter.

[RobertEarl]

5. What is wrong with you?

You don't want big brother watching over you?

You think, rather have the opinion, that the 4th is saying you have a right to not be watched over?

What do you think you are? Some kind of special individual that the government should respect, just because of "some damn piece of paper"?

"Some damn piece of paper" is a president GWB quote.

Take my advice, TX for Obama is watching out for you and trying to protect you. Just submit. It's all legal!

[Skittles]

6. STOP IT ROBERTEARL

[sibelian]

8. PERFECTLY legal.

And if it's legal that must mean it's GOOD.

Because politics is all about lerning how to feel okay with things that are legal.

[sibelian]

9. That's the position you have to adopt so your username doesn't look stupid.

[pecwae]

10. You okay with naked scans too?

http://gizmodo.com/5604430/oops-the-feds-have-been-storing-nudie-checkpoint-scan-images (one of hundreds of links) The agencies promised not to use them improperly. They promised not to store them. They promised the backscatter was completely safe. They assured us it would prevent terrorism.

[fasttense]

7. Yes, and the Supremes decided corporations are people and picked W as our president

There is a lot the Supremes do which is neither according to the Constitution (in fact the Constitution does NOT give them the power or authority to determine if a law is Constitutional) nor legal. There is documented evidence that Thomas has taken bribes. If one of them can do it and get away with it, they are all probably doing it.

So, I wouldn't use 9 unelected kings as my source to determine legality. They are as crooked and corrupt as banksters.

Legal really has no meaning anymore. We are no longer a country ruled by laws. We are ruled by the whims of a handful of rich men. So to quote laws, legal opinions and claim something is legal is to say that the whims of a handful of rich men have been satisfied.

So which whim, of which rich man, does this NSA spying on all Americans satisfy?

[Gravitycollapse]

13. Thank you.

[Laelth]

12. All true.

However, we desperately need new guidance from the SCOTUS on this issue. What the NSA is doing is multiple orders of magnitude more intrusive than a pen register on a single dispatch station in a single state.

What we have here is quite different and well beyond what the Court envisioned in 1979.

-Laelth

[Laelth]

11. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth