I completely agree. One entity hockey with so much power over our lives can be extremely dangerous.

For the past six months, ever since the Snowden leaks began , multiple groups have attempted to bring suit against the NSA or the corporations that worked with it, hand-in-glove, to facilitate widespread monitoring of both foreign and domestic data. For the most part, those cases have been lost, though hockey some are on appeal. Today, for the first time, a district court judge handed down a scathing rebuke of the government’s surveillance state . Richard Leon, a United States District Court Judge for the District of Columbia, handed hockey down a decision today that punches holes in the government’s arguments — at least briefly.
For years, one of the central pillars of the NSA’s wiretapping hockey scheme has been the idea that no one possesses standing to challenge the legality of the law. Thanks to Snowden, hockey that’s changed. Leon writes that “Where the plaintiffs in Clapper could only speculate as to whether they would be surveilled at all, the plaintiffs in this case can point to strong evidence that, as Verizon customers, their telephony metadata has been collected for the last seven years (and stored for the last five).” The question of search
The US government has essentially attempted to redefine the meaning of what it means to “search” something under the 4th Amendment . Since it has the right to search an individual’s phone records (established in a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland , which ruled that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the record of their phone calls) the NSA has argued that it therefore has the right to search everyone’s phone records, anytime it pleases .
According to Leon, the conditions the Supreme Court decided in Smith v. Maryland are so completely different than the current programs, there is no justification for concluding that Smith adequately covers the current program. “It’s hockey one thing to say that people expect phone companies to occasionally provide information to law enforcement; it is quite another to suggest that our citizens expect all phone companies to operate what is effectively a joint intelligence-gathering operation hockey with the Government.”
Leon goes on to declare that because the relationship and nature of phone technology has changed drastically over the past three decades, because these devices are now repositories of personal information, browsing habits, private conversations, romantic or sexual interests, and often contain financial data, it is ridiculous to imply that the same privacy standard that was applicable in 1979 should still apply in 2013.
Finally, Leon writes that the government has yet to disclose a single example of any investigation into terrorism which was substantially accelerated or fundamentally achieved by bulk metadata collection. According to him, despite repeatedly citing speed as a justification hockey for the program, the government “does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack or otherwise hockey aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.”
I’ve read through and agree with Leon’s nearly-70-page ruling, but the fact is, he’s standing alone on this one. No other US court has reached these conclusions. The general verbiage coming out of both chambers hockey of Congress and the White House is that everything is fine, all necessary protections are in place, and the government is taking care of everything. Snowden’s leaks may have sparked outrage and some impetus for change, but that drive has been slow and meandering, hockey partly hockey thanks to sideshows like the shutdown, partly because the American people, as a whole, aren’t really that upset. No significant reforms have been made, no new oversight has been instituted.
The truly stunning thing will be if Leon’s ruling hockey survives on appeal and is taken up by the Supreme Court. It’s great that a judge has finally been wiling to confront the issues hockey with bulk data collection, but the ruling must survive significant challenges in friendlier jurisdictions.
I can understand US citizens… The whole NSA thing doesn’t really hit you that hard. But as a European, this is scary! And unfair! And unacceptable! I don’t have any protection. My whole life, every step I take, everything I do, have done and will be doing is monitored, tracked and archived. Who can tell me this data won’t be used against me someday? Like, “you want to change your insurance? Oooh, snap… Your phone conversations show an above-average use of words like ‘wine’ and ‘party’, that’s a risk factor – sorry..” hockey
I completely agree. One entity hockey with so much power over our lives can be extremely dangerous. And it’s not like American hockey agencies such as the FBI haven’t arrested people