Timelordwho wrote:
Wow, it was found that the phone tapping was illegal.
http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/NSA_ca2_20150507.pdf
Phone taping has been illegal for about as long as phones have existed. If you meant to say "broad collection of metadata was found to be unconstitutional", you'd be wrong, since the decision you just linked specifically declined to address the constitutionality of such collection. What it also didn't do was grant the plaintiffs injunction against the currently operating program. What it did do, however, was find that the law in question didn't explicitly authorize that broad a collection scheme, and thus reversed an earlier district court dismissal of the suit, sending it back to the district court for further action.
Saying "yeah, you do have a case" isn't the same as declaring something to be illegal. Close though.
Quote:
It's almost as if there was a guy who blew the whistle in this. He was probably anti privacy though, and wanted governments to be more opaque.
Yeah, again, I think whoever wrote that decision (it's unclear if the judge was stating his own opinion, or repeating something in a brief) was incorrect. While Snowden's release was a big public thing, the fact is that this program has been well understood to be operating since long before Snowden. I seem to recall us having arguments about collection of phone metadata on this very forum back when Bush was still president. Saying "the public never knew this until Snowden revealed it" is pretty blatantly incorrect. The law in question was passed back in 2006, and everyone knew what the law meant and how it would be used to collect that metadata.
I suppose if they meant "people in the public ignorant of this topic until it became a big enough news story to get tossed right in front of their couch potato eyes", then yeah, I guess he had something to do with it.
Edited, May 7th 2015 4:38pm by gbaji