Posted on 04/07/2014 9:15:07 AM PDT by xzins
The US Supreme Court is chickening out and taking a step back from the entire NSA scandal. Rather than making a final decision on whether the bulk telephone metadata surveillance program is constitutional, the Supreme Court has decided to decline the case.
Instead, the Court has now left lower courts to contradict each other over the legality of this particular NSA surveillance program. One court, for instance, has described the metadata program as an “almost-Orwellian” effort.
In fact, this particular petition brought to the Supreme Court concerns precisely a decision given out by US District Judge Richard Leon, who also wrote that in his opinion, America’s founding fathers would be aghast at the spying practices.
Political activist Larry Klayman skipped the Appeal Court and went straight to the Supreme Court, saying that this is a case of imperative public importance, so it should immediately get the attention of the highest court. It should be mentioned that the Supreme Court doesn’t normally pick out cases before they go to the Federal Appeal Court.
The decision to ignore this particular case comes just before the White House is expected to come up with a series of more drastic reforms for the National Security Agency. So far, these reforms have extended to restricting the NSA’s access to the records and having a third party hold them rather than the agency itself, as if that will fix the issue generated by the initial collection.
Most people don’t really expect big changes in the way the United States conducts surveillance considering its weak response thus far and clear unwillingness to make any real changes.
The future of the telephony metadata collection program will most likely be decided by politicians rather than judges. There are several important bills awaiting in Congress, including some that will considerably cut down on NSA’s surveillance powers.
The intelligence community has been lobbying the Congress not to pass the bill, but social pressure might eventually pay off and the bills could still pass.
One of these bills has been written by Jim Sensenbrenner, the same man who wrote the Patriot Act, which the NSA uses to hide behind whenever it explains why a certain surveillance program is legal. Sensenbrenner now wants to set things right and make sure there’s no loophole to be used by the intelligence agencies.
They are as political as the rest. Biased, cowardly, imposing their will on the masses when they can get away with it.
Appointed for life, senile, affirmative action’d, yet they still can’t take a moral, Constitutional stand.
Actually, COtanker, the definition of metadata isn’t the issue. The issue is the government’s bulk collection program. What the program is collecting we will call X. Is what they are collecting, X, a violation of the 4th amendment or isn’t it?
Technically, metadata is data that describes data or “data about data”, but recent revelations have shown that they are collecting bulk data, that is, everything.
So, the issue is the total of X that they are collecting.
I don't really know what metadata is, but I am told if I don't electronically scrub my documents my metadata can be read by anyone I send them to. If there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in metadata then reading it is not a search and there is no 4th Amendment violation.
This is a big, new issue and the Court will need to decide it fully informed. I sure don't feel ready to make a judgment about it.
So, if collection program, X, included the content of your cellphone conversations, then you would have no problem with it, since you’ve broadcast over a cell frequency, and that, therefore, is in the public domain?
proved useful when Ocare came before the court....
There are no checks and balances now. The Rat senate does whatever their Rat leader says. The House GOP just pays lip service. Everyone in government is getting rich; no reason to stop the gravy train.
Ever wonder why we’re losing every time? I mean, shouldn’t a court case or house vote go our way now and then? No, not when you consider that the “long march through the institutions” as succeeded. What ever meager wins we get will only be to keep most of us somewhat pacified.
We’ve been playing a rigged game. We’re a laughing stock.
I told you I don't know enough about the metadata issue to take a position on the issue. A good first step would be knowing what it actually is, which given the decrepit state of American journalism I haven't seen.
Sadly, this is not the system the Founders established. Constitutional changes in taxation, election of senators, and election of president, have removed from us very important checks and balances.
I bristle, demshateGod, when I hear "3 branches of government".
That is SUCH a misrepresentation.
The US Constitution clearly speaks of 5 branches of government.
We have written out THE PEOPLE and THE STATES. The Constitution does not do that.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
We the People: 1st Branch of Government -- The People
Union: 2nd Branch of Government -- The States
Legislative/Congress: 3rd
Executive: 4th
Judicial: 5th
To make sure this wasn't missed, the Founders clarified in the Bill of Rights their clear intent by closing out with the final word, the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Very fair response, CoTanker. My point is that the case is not about a term “metadata”, but it is about a collection program and ALL that it collects no matter what name some people might to apply.
You make a good point. Our technology has made it possible to collect all the metadata. It has never been technologically possible to do that before. The phone company did have all the phone numbers called (back when there was “the phone company”), but it was not searchable when the Court decided Smith v. Maryland. So, does the vast reach of the program make it a 4th Amendment violation? I don’t know, but maybe.
One thing that might be relevant is that that the district courts are the triers of fact and the appeals court are the determiners of legal correctness of the district hearings. So, I don’t really see how the appeals court in this case really are relevant to any Scotus interest in further development in the case.
In these cases, we have district courts directly contradicting one another.
What our FedGov calls "metadata", I call data. I've got 30 years of hard-core data modeling and management with the largest private data warehouses on earth.
Metadata is either specific technical information used in locating desired records (indexes, row and table pointers - really nerdy stuff), or data attributes that facilitate finding specific info / records (like "I want to retrieve the names of every household in a zip code who own a house over 3,000 sq ft and has more than 3 children, etc.). Using a query on household ownership = true -and- house sq ft > 3,000 -and- zip code = 33436 - is using metadata to locate specific home owners. Or, metadata helps to classify data for aggregation - like census attributes used to add up statistics on people and households.
The "metadata" that the SA is collecting contains personally identifying information - to/from phone numbers, as well as logistic and behavioral information (geo codes, date/time, call duration, patterns, etc.)
So, we are basically out of options for government protection of our rights. I guess it is now up to us.
The Supremes have a different take on whether they will grant review than the media and most people. They only give full review to under 200 cases per year. So, they will let an issue like this percolate and if the Courts of Appeals eventually come up with a consistent position that most of the Justices are OK with, they won’t ever have to address the issue. On the other hand, if a Circuit split develops, they will have the benefit of a thorough and vigorous presentation of the two sides before they even get their own briefs.
I wonder who paid them off.
All three branches of government are corrupt to the core.
I am of two minds concerning Roberts. His betrayal with Obamacare did more harm than ANY foreign enemy. The fact his ruling seem contradict his history made me near certain he was blackmailed. But..
I will never forget him yuking it up with the press corps the next morning as he was headed off to Malta
so he wouldn’t have to face the firestorm from those of us who believed in him. Blackmail or not it was treason.
Leave it alone, Jim. You've already done enough.
Thank you. Now I can understand why my people want it scrubbed off what we send out of the office.
Of course they won’t take the case! The NBA obtained info this way to blackmail them. Just ask Roberts.
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