The SNOWDEN Saga continues...

[gaiusmarius]

NSA decryption revelations 'provide roadmap' to adversaries, US warns

Office of the director of national intelligence also suggests stories published by the Guardian and New York Times are 'not news'


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/06/nsa-encryption-revelations-roadmap-us

looks like the nsa is PISSED! lmao! serves them right abusing this incredible power to collect everything.

the one thing i worry about is this crap being accepted in the end and becoming the norm. till now they probably didnt use this tech very much, as they wanted to keep it secret. but now they could literally decide to use this tech for small time crap too, unless we can defeat this stuff and get them to go back to using individual warrants to collect someones information.

 

[resinryder]

I apologize if my post regarding Rand Paul backing McConnell was out of line.
He, Paul, has been sorta front and center on the Snowden revelations and his backing of a man that is a huge part of the "permissive/ enabling" of NSA programs is /was shocking so I felt it was relevant to the discussion.
I'll stay out of the thread and keep my opinions to myself. Thanks for allowing me to have been part of the discussion thus far.

 

[gaiusmarius]

I apologize if my post regarding Rand Paul backing McConnell was out of line.
He, Paul, has been sorta front and center on the Snowden revelations and his backing of a man that is a huge part of the "permissive/ enabling" of NSA programs is /was shocking so I felt it was relevant to the discussion.
I'll stay out of the thread and keep my opinions to myself. Thanks for allowing me to have been part of the discussion thus far.

please don't be offended, i'm only human, didnt see the point you were trying to make. thought it was just current events being posted after i asked to stay on topic in the op.

 

[Tudo]

nsa?

Calling NSA (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qrlDGhoI1Q

He calls back too. I saw one comment saying something like imagine thousands of these calls every day or something like that

 

[MrDanky]

https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2013.09.04_amicus_brief_-_rep_sensenbrenner.pdf

....The guy who drafted the Patriot Act is now suing the government

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/2013.09.04_amicus_brief_-_nra.pdf

...and so is the National Rifle Association

(those links are actual PDF documents of the briefings they filed to the gov)

 

[MrDanky]

a good read:

Dear NSA, Thanks for Making Us All Insecure

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-06/dear-nsa-thanks-for-making-us-all-insecure#r=read

 

[Red Fang]

you say what I want and only what I want 'eh? Ok I think he is a hero, anyone that can strike a blow against the NSA and others that seek to trample our freedoms and monitor everything is ok in my book! I would like to make a comment on hypocrisy but I won't. Go snowden!

 

[gaiusmarius]

NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents

• Secret deal places no legal limits on use of data by Israelis
• Only official US government communications protected
• Agency insists it complies with rules governing privacy

he National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.

The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.

But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.

read the whole article here
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents

 

[gaiusmarius]

NSA and Israeli intelligence: memorandum of understanding – full document

Top-secret document shows how intelligence being shared with Israel would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications

http://www.theguardian.com/world/in...ntelligence-memorandum-understanding-document

 

[Storm Shadow]

what a shocker

 

[BudToaster]

maybe this was a back-end payment for help with Stuxnet (which, i must admit is a masterful bit of hacking ... respect for figuring out how to leverage thumbdrives to spread the virus ... welcome to the next level, eh?)

 

[bentom187]

NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek's Enterprise

Congressional leaders already have a lot of power, but do they secretly want to captain the USS Enterprise? In an in-depth profile of NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, Foreign Policy reveals that one of the ways the general endeared himself to lawmakers and officials was to make them feel like Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise from the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."


"When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather 'captain's chair' in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

'Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,' says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits."

 

[gaiusmarius]

and the leaks continue....


NSA planted bugs at Indian missions in D.C., U.N.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...t-indian-missions-in-dc-un/article5164944.ece

Two of the most important nerve-centres of Indian diplomacy outside the country — the Permanent Mission of India at the United Nations and the embassy in Washington, DC — were targets of such sophisticated bugs implanted by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that entire computer hard disks might have been copied by the American agency. The U.N. Mission building in New York and the embassy premises, including its annex, in Washington were on a top-secret list of countries and missions — many of them European allies of the U.S. — chosen for intensive spying.

According to a top-secret NSA document obtained by The Hindu, the NSA selected India’s U.N. office and the embassy as “location target” for infiltrating their computers and telephones with hi-tech bugs, which might have given them access to vast quantities of Internet traffic, e-mails, telephone and office conversations and even official documents stored digitally.

Since the NSA revelations began in June, U.S. President Barack Obama and other top American officials have all claimed that the surveillance activities were aimed exclusively at preventing terrorist attacks. But the targeted spying of Indian diplomatic buildings could have been done for political and commercial reasons — not the core responsibility of the NSA.

According to the 2010 COMINT (communication intelligence) document about “Close Access SIGADs”, the offices of Indian diplomats and high-ranking military officials stationed at these important posts were targets of four different kinds of electronic snooping devices:

Lifesaver, which facilitates imaging of the hard drive of computers

Highlands, which makes digital collection from implants

Vagrant, which collects data of open computer screens, and

Magnetic, which is a collection of digital signals

All the Indian “targets” in the list are marked with an asterisk, which, according to the document, means that they “have either been dropped or are slated to be dropped in the near future.” The NSA document doesn’t say when and how the bugs were implanted or how much of data was lifted from Indian offices, but all of them were on the “target” list for more than one type of data collection bugs.

Asked by The Hindu, why India’s U.N. mission and embassy, which clearly pose no terrorism threat to the U.S., were targeted by the NSA, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said: “The U.S. government will respond through diplomatic channels to our partners and allies. While we are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. We value our cooperation with all countries on issues of mutual concern.”

But the spokesman didn’t answer The Hindu’s specific questions about why the top-secret document about spying on Indian missions shouldn’t be revealed or “reproduced by this newspaper in full or part”.

The document obtained by The Hindu reveals a scary scenario of breach of official secrecy of Indian missions and violation of privacy of Indian diplomats and other staff working in the three premises that were targeted.

Located between 2nd and 3rd Avenue on 43rd Street in the eastern part of Manhattan, the office of India’s permanent representative to the UN was on top of the list of Indian targets. Designed by the legendary Indian architect, Charles Correa, the building with a red granite base and a double-height penthouse porch at the top has the offices of India’s permanent representative, deputy permanent representative, a minister and political coordinator, six counsellors, a Colonel-rank military advisor and several other secretaries who look after different areas of India’s engagement with the world.

It was this building that was the main target of all four NSA bugs: from Lifesaver, which can send to the NSA copies of everything saved on the hard drives of office computers, to Vagrant, which can pick data straight from computer screens.

Though emails sent to India’s New York mission have remained unanswered so far, an Indian diplomat told The Hindu that the NSA eavesdropping might have done “extensive damage” to India’s stand on many international issues ranging from UN Security Council reforms to peacekeeping operations. “If they could implant bugs inside communications equipment of European Union office here and tap into their communications cables as well, there is no reason to believe that they didn’t snoop on us,” said the diplomat, speaking strictly on condition of anonymity. “We are still assessing the damage. If they managed to copy our hard drives, nothing is left to imagination.”

Second to the UN mission on the “target” list was the chancery building of the Indian Embassy located at 2107, Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC. Consisting of two adjacent buildings, one constructed in 1885 and the other in 1901, the chancery has offices of the Indian ambassador, the deputy chief of mission, several ministers and counsellors who head political, economic, defence and industry sections and three Defence Attachés representing the Indian Army, Air Force and Navy. This building, from where India maintains its diplomatic, trade and strategic ties with the U.S., was on the “target” list for three bugs that can make images of hard drives, pick digital signals and copy data of computer screens.

The third Indian building targeted by the NSA is the embassy annex located on 2536, Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC. The annex has three very important departments: the consular section, headed by a minister, looks after visa services; the commerce department, also headed by a minister, is involved in a broad range of trade issues and negotiations besides assisting the Indian businesses; and an office of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), represented by a counsellor, takes care of cooperation between two countries in the field of space. This building was on the NSA “target” list for Highlands and Vagrant, which collect data from implants and computer screens respectively. It’s important to recall here that India’s space programme was targeted by another NSA tool PRISM, which intercepts and collects actual content on internet and telephone networks (as reported by The Hindu on Tuesday).

But officials at the Indian embassy claim that the premises are safe. “Adequate measures are in place in this regard and all steps taken to safeguard the national interest,” wrote an official in an email response to queries by The Hindu. Though no Indian official was willing to talk on record specifically about the NSA bugs mentioned in the top secret document, in private they admitted that it’s a violation of all norms and security. “If these bugs were implanted physically on our machinery, telephones and computers, it means a serious breach in security. Who did that job for them? It’s very alarming situation. Even if they accessed our data remotely, it is quite a serious matter because we try to de-bug our systems constantly,” said an Indian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The document obtained by The Hindu doesn’t say if the bugs were placed physically or if the machines at the Indian Mission and embassy were targeted through the internet network, bugs similar to those aimed at Indian offices were actually “implanted” in a commercially available encrypted fax machine used at missions such as that of the European Union. In a recent expose, The Guardian had revealed that the NSA infiltrated the internal computer network of several European embassies and the EU to intercept their communications. That had led to a roar of protests from European capitals.

Alarm bells have been ringing in New Delhi too since July when it was first reported that 38 embassies and diplomatic missions, including the Indian embassy in Washington, were targeted by the NSA. Reacting to the reports, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin had expressed concern at the “disconcerting” reports and said that the government would take up the concern with the Americans. But at that time, the Indian government was neither aware of the fact that the UN mission in New York too was a “target” of NSA bugging nor did the officials know a thing about the nature and capabilities of the bugs used for snooping on their offices.

The Indian mission to the UN has so far not reacted to either the reports of snooping on foreign missions nor to The Hindu’s queries sent to its office in New York, but the embassy officials have discussed the issue with their American counterparts. “Our government has expressed concerns over the reports of monitoring of the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C. by U.S. agencies, and the Embassy in Washington D.C. has raised these concerns with the U.S. government,” said an embassy official in an email repose to The Hindu’s queries, without elaborating at what level and in which meeting the issue was raised or what was the response of American officials.

But the U.S. officials have already made it clear that they would not “apologise” to anyone for the bugging of foreign mission, including the Indian embassy and New York office, as shown in NSA documents. “While we’re not going to comment publicly on the specifics of alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy we’ve made clear that the U.S. gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations,” U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell had told reporters at his daily news conference on July 2, a day after the spying on European embassies was revealed for the first time in reports where India was just mentioned in a passing reference.

 

[Siomha]

to be quite honest i always thought the government is watching everyone in the world.

i didnt know it is mostly the USA but thought the european ones do it for sure. which makes no different to me at all who spying on whom fact is we are all watched.

the european politician sign an Agreement with the USA were every bank account from People going to america are being checked out.

so you tell me when a Country knows your damn bank account they dont know the rest of you?

right....

 

[gaiusmarius]

actually the europeans are rethinking the swift financial information exchange after seeing that the financial info they shared was spied by nsa, specially on the legal big money movements of the euro economy. instead of looking for terror funding which is why the financial transparency thing was agreed on in the first place. they were using the information gleaned to spy on the countries economies and on mass buying habits of the population.

and no, no other country was sucking up the information directly off the transatlantic cables, or getting back door access from all the major internet service and software providers. other countries have to hack their way in. and they do not hack or bug their allies without a damn good reason, not just on a routine basis.

the Europeans are also considering making a strict privacy law for the european states. so yeah it doesn't seem they think it's "normal" and "done by all countries."

 

[MrDanky]

i just cannot believe that this is all still going down and there is nothing anyone can do about it...... or so it seems....greenwald, poitras, NYT, WP, guardian, etc;.... they are all trying, but the masses just are too ignorant and caught up in the material world we have here in Amurrrica to get up and revolt.... . i feel like a great majority of the Amurrrican people have officially been dumbed down to the max!

 

[bombadil.360]

actually the europeans are rethinking the swift financial information exchange after seeing that the financial info they shared was spied by nsa, specially on the legal big money movements of the euro economy. instead of looking for terror funding which is why the financial transparency thing was agreed on in the first place. they were using the information gleaned to spy on the countries economies and on mass buying habits of the population.

and no, no other country was sucking up the information directly off the transatlantic cables, or getting back door access from all the major internet service and software providers. other countries have to hack their way in. and they do not hack or bug their allies without a damn good reason, not just on a routine basis.

the Europeans are also considering making a strict privacy law for the european states. so yeah it doesn't seem they think it's "normal" and "done by all countries."

it does not really matter if other countries are doing it, it is still wrong.

however, we know for a fact other countries do it, and even more shamelessly.

for example, in Venezuela, they used a list of everyone who signed for a recall referendum against Chavez to discriminate against, deny state jobs, deny state loans, etc... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tascón_List

interestingly enough, new lists appeared, that came out of the so-called "secret" vote, in state elections as well as new presidential elections, where it was known who voted for whom... this also was used to discriminate against anyone who did not vote for Chavez; people who owned a business were closed down after questionable tax evasion charges etc...

now there is a state sponsored department that monitors activities in social networks, and lists anyone making criticism of the government etc...

when governments become nothing but a legal organized mafia, they'll use any means they have to stay in power, and this phenomenon is global and not only restricted to the U.S.

and again, just because others do it, does not justify what the nsa does, imo.

peace

 

[gaiusmarius]

i agree it matters not if others are doing it or not, it's still fucked up.

but can not agree that other countries are doing it in the same way. yes there may be some countries that watch their citizens like that, but the NSA is the only one who is watching the whole world, who has the back door access and keys to break encryption of most kinds. only the US has back door access to google, facebook, twitter, yahoo, skype etc. other countries might wish to do the same thing, but they lack the means to operate on the global scale. but yes the modern day dictator is watching his populations internet activities as well as their real life. but when they want to find out classified or encrypted info about another country they have to set up a cyber attack, they can't just press a few keys and get all the info from all over the world. so yeah saying everyone does it is just a misleading justification in the end

 

[vta]

Spying and lying

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano


When Edward Snowden first revealed the spying the NSA has been conducting on what was then thought to be only customers of Verizon, the government was embarrassed, but it reluctantly acknowledged that Snowden revealed a truth. He had, after all, displayed an accurate and faithful copy of a judicial order signed by a FISA Court judge directing Verizon to give billing information to NSA agents about its 113,000,000 American customers.

Not to worry, the government’s apologists offered, this is only telephone macro-metadata, meaning information about who spoke to whom, when they talked and for how long, and where they were when they talked, but not what they actually said to each other.

When Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, stated under oath at a House hearing that his spies lack the authority to capture content, he avoided addressing whether they have the ability to do so, because he knows they do.

His boss, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and a less finessed liar than the general, said under oath at a Senate hearing flatly that the feds were not gathering massive amounts of data about hundreds of millions of Americans, when he knew that they were. And President Obama himself has stated on a few occasions that the government “is not reading” your emails or “listening” to your phone conversations, even though he knows they can.

Since the essence of spying is stealing and keeping secrets, we should not be surprised when that essence is supported by deception and lying. But lying to one’s employers (the American people) is a fireable offense, and lying under oath (to Congress) is a criminal offense. And a government that lies over and over again to the people it is lawfully obliged to serve is not believable and leads to lawlessness.

Obama should have known better than to use Clintonesque language by denying that something “is” happening at the moment he is discussing it. In reality, Obama knows his spies have exceeded their authority under even a broad reading of the Patriot Act and the FISA laws and have grossly failed to comply with their oaths to uphold the Fourth Amendment.

That amendment -- which requires judicially issued search warrants based on identifiable probable cause of unlawful behavior, warrants that particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized -- was written to prevent all governmental dragnets, fishing expeditions, warrantless invasions of privacy and general warrants (those, like the FISA Court warrants, that do not name the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized). It was animated by the Framers’ determination to prevent the new federal government from doing to Americans what the British had done to the colonists.

However, in some of my conversations with folks in the government, I have learned that when the government gathers intelligence in order to prevent the future occurrence of an act of domestic terror, as opposed to when it gathers evidence in order to solve a crime that has already been committed, it believes it is not subject to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment.

The feds have based their massive spying apparatus on a secretly stated and utterly ignoble lie -- that the Constitution only restrains them when they are engaged in criminal investigations, and not for any other purposes. Such an argument is Stalinesque in its sweep, has no support in history, law or Supreme Court jurisprudence, and is a subterfuge concocted to dupe the public, the media and the judiciary into overlooking, accepting and authorizing the broadest governmental assault on constitutionally protected freedoms since the Alien and Sedition Acts.

We know that the Fourth Amendment was written to restrain the government for all purposes because the British government tormented the Framers and violated their right to privacy for many non-criminal-based governmental purposes, such as tax collecting, speech suppressing and intelligence gathering. The government’s argument, if accepted, would permit the government to engage in a vast array of unlawful human indignities from torture to pre-crime detention to the presence of the government in the bedroom, the boardroom and the confessional, so long as it was not trying to solve a crime. The reason you probably have not heard this argument is that the feds will only make it in secret to their favorite secret court.

In March 2009, Judge Reggie B. Walton, the chief judge of that secret court, the FISA Court, complained in secret about what the court had been told in secret. In that court, only NSA agents and Department of Justice lawyers appear. The court’s only source for its facts and legal arguments is the NSA. We don’t know what deceptions the NSA visited on the court from which it receives general warrants and the involvement of which forms a basis for Obama’s laughable argument that his spies are supervised by the judiciary. But we know that Walton was lied to.

He wrote: “To approve such a program, the Court must have every confidence that the government is doing its utmost to ensure that those responsible for implementation fully comply with the Court’s wishes. The Court no longer has such confidence.”

Walton undoubtedly knew then what we know now: that the NSA has in its possession the content of every telephone conversation, text message and email sent into, out of or within the United States in the past two and a half years. And it has shared all of that with other government agencies and foreign governments. And it has lied to him in order to get all that.

Is this the government the Framers gave us? Or has it been perverted beyond recognition? What shall we do about it?

Thomas Paine, when confronted with British government-orchestrated assaults on liberty not nearly as pervasive as this NSA spying, remarked that it is the duty of the patriot to protect the liberties of his countrymen from their government. Where are those patriots when we need them?

 

[vta]

Is the FISA Court constitutional?

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano


After President Richard Nixon left office in 1974, a bipartisan congressional investigation discovered many of his constitutional excesses. Foremost among them was the use of FBI and CIA agents to spy on Americans in violation of federal law and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Nixon argued that the government needed to monitor “subversives” in order to shore up the “national security.” As for breaking the law and violating the Constitution, Nixon defended himself by proclaiming in a now infamous post-presidency interview with David Frost that: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

That Henry VIII-like statement was too much for Congress to bear in the Carter years, so it enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which prohibited domestic spying unless the feds first obtained search warrants for surveillance from a federal judge sitting on a newly created FISA court. The FISA court, populated by sitting federal judges assigned there by the chief justice, was charged with issuing secret general warrants based upon secret evidence or no evidence and all in violation of the Constitution, which requires the presentation of evidence that constitutes probable cause of crime as the sole linchpin for the issuance of a search warrant.

When Edward Snowden, the former contractor to the National Security Administration (NSA), revealed that since at least 2004 the FISA court has been issuing general warrants to NSA agents and to telecoms and Internet service providers directing that the NSA capture in bulk the content of telephone calls and emails and texts sent into, out of or within the United States, we learned a bit more about the operation of the FISA court.

What we learned makes it self-evident that the FISA Court itself is unconstitutional.

The Constitution establishes a limited federal government, which includes a limited federal judiciary. Because the Framers feared that federal judges might act as super-legislatures and go about declaring unconstitutional whatever legislation or presidential actions displeased them, they wrote into Article III of the Constitution the absolute prerequisite of the existence of a case or controversy before the jurisdiction of any federal court could be invoked.

The case or controversy requirement was drafted to prevent courts from rendering advisory opinions whereby they simply declared that they had certain authority or that some statute or executive act was unconstitutional. The case or controversy requirement has been uniformly interpreted by the Supreme Court to require either a plaintiff whose allegations state a case of real palpable harm against a defendant, or a defendant in a criminal case who is in real jeopardy of losing life, liberty or property at the hands of the government before a federal court may have jurisdiction.

The case or controversy requirement demands that there be real adversity between two or more distinct entities each of which has a stake in the outcome of a dispute before a federal court can exercise any jurisdiction. Federal courts can only resolve disputes; they cannot rule with finality in the abstract or when approached by only one party. They can grant preliminary temporary relief to one party -- in order to freeze the status quo and in anticipation of an adversarial contest on the merits -- but they cannot rule when only one party is noticed and shows up.

This is precisely how the FISA court functions, and yet we have no merit-based ruling by the Supreme Court on its constitutionality. We do, however, have a solid indication as to how the court would rule. The seminal case in Supreme Court history is Marbury v. Madison (1803). In that case, Congress had attempted to give original jurisdiction to the Supreme Court to hear a dispute that the Constitution said could only be heard by that court in an appellate setting. In denying Marbury’s meritorious claim, the court held definitively that Congress cannot alter the Constitution’s requirements that serve as a precondition for invoking the jurisdiction of a federal court.

But this is just what Congress did with FISA. In the FISA court, only the government appears, seeking a generalized search warrant without regard to the facts of any specific case. There is no case or controversy in the constitutional sense as there is no adversariness: No plaintiff is suing a defendant, and no defendant is being prosecuted by the government. Absent adversariness, the federal courts have no jurisdiction to do anything.

This flawed system is complicated even further by the fact that should the FISA court deny an application for a general warrant because it believes the government’s procedures to be illegal or unconstitutional, those court orders are non-binding and the government has ignored them. Unenforceable rulings that may be disregarded by another branch of the government are not judicial decisions at all, but impermissible advisory opinions prohibited by the Framers.

When a FISA court judge rules that the NSA has the constitutional power to spy on Americans about whom it has no evidence of wrongdoing, as one judge did two weeks ago, because that ruling did not emanate out of a case or controversy -- no one was in court to dispute it -- the court is without authority to hear the matter, and thus the ruling is meaningless.

By altering the constitutionally mandated requirement of the existence of a case or controversy before the jurisdiction of the federal courts may be invoked, Congress has lessened the protection of the right to be left alone that the Framers intentionally sought to enshrine. But don’t expect the government to wake up to this threat to our freedom. Its consistent behavior has demonstrated that it doesn’t care whether it violates the Constitution. Instead, expect the president’s secret agents and the politicians who support them to hide their wrongdoing behind more layers of secrecy.