> "The Obama administration has repeatedly stated that the NSA keeps only the content of messages and communications of people it is intentionally targeting – but internal documents reveal the agency retains vast amounts of metadata."
The administration and NSA can't defend themselves because they don't know how much more evidence Snowden took with him to reveal their consistent lies. Or who else might release other evidence of other illegal acts, or behavior that would lead to losing funding, votes, etc.
Whistleblowers seem now the strongest defense we have against overreaching and unaccountable centralized power violating the Constitution. Other people in Snowden's position must read Hacker News.
If you're out there, think about acting on your conscience as Snowden and others did. Your position is stronger than ever. You'll have support from the EFF, ACLU, Guardian, and most of this community.
If they do then it should be expressly illegal to even accidentally include communication fr USG watchdog groups. I know it's already illegal, since they technically need warrants, but seeing as that hasn't stopped them from doing so anyway under absurd technicalities, I seems that we need a black list (never ever monitor these people and orgs) to match the white list (people of interest we are actively monitoring). Everything in between should continue to be covered under current warrant requirements. Override the black list should require both a warrant and the signature of the president of the US and a representative or senator from the state where that person or organization is domiciled.
"If you're out there, think about acting on your conscience as Snowden and others did. Your position is stronger than ever. You'll have support from the EFF, ACLU, Guardian, and most of this community."
I think that's an awful lot to ask of somebody, considering what happened to Snowden: he was charged with some very serious crimes and will probably have to remain in exile indefinitely. If the government ever catches him, or if the Russians decide they don't want him around anymore, he may have to spend the rest of his life in prison. The resources of the EFF, ACLU and The Guardian are tiny compared to what the U.S. government can throw at him (the government has essentially unlimited resources). Someone who is as brave and selfless as Snowden is indeed rare, and I think it's unlikely that we'll see his actions repeated in the foreseeable future.
I'm pretty sure I remember that one of the original leaks showed that they keep metadata on Americans roughly indefinitely, and that they can keep full data (i.e. not metadata) for up to 7 days in order to determine whether or not the individual or their actions can be considered a threat. The reason I remember this is that I immediately thought that building a google-like index for each individual, and storing that index indefinitely, would be equivalent to what was stated in the leak. In fact, given all the subsequent leaks, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they are doing.
The administration and NSA can't defend themselves because they don't know how much more evidence Snowden took with him to reveal their consistent lies. Or who else might release other evidence of other illegal acts, or behavior that would lead to losing funding, votes, etc.
Whistleblowers seem now the strongest defense we have against overreaching and unaccountable centralized power violating the Constitution. Other people in Snowden's position must read Hacker News.
If you're out there, think about acting on your conscience as Snowden and others did. Your position is stronger than ever. You'll have support from the EFF, ACLU, Guardian, and most of this community.