U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal:

(Reuters) - Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans' telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful - and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.

In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.

Snowden, who fled to Russia in the aftermath of the 2013 disclosures and still faces U.S. espionage charges, said on Twitter that the ruling was a vindication of his decision to go public with evidence of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping operation.


"I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA's activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them," Snowden said in a message posted to Twitter.

Evidence that the NSA was secretly building a vast database of U.S. telephone records - the who, the how, the when, and the where of millions of mobile calls - was the first and arguably the most explosive of the Snowden revelations published by the Guardian newspaper in 2013.

Up until that moment, top intelligence officials publicly insisted the NSA never knowingly collected information on Americans at all. After the program's exposure, U.S. officials fell back on the argument that the spying had played a crucial role in fighting domestic extremism, citing in particular the case of four San Diego residents who were accused of providing aid to religious fanatics in Somalia.

U.S. officials insisted that the four - Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud, and Issa Doreh - were convicted in 2013 thanks to the NSA's telephone record spying, but the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that those claims were "inconsistent with the contents of the classified record."

The ruling will not affect the convictions of Moalin and his fellow defendants; the court ruled the illegal surveillance did not taint the evidence introduced at their trial. Nevertheless, watchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped bring the case to appeal, welcomed the judges' verdict on the NSA's spy program.

"Today's ruling is a victory for our privacy rights," the ACLU said in a statement, saying it "makes plain that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records violated the Constitution."


So....what now?

I want to see heads roll, people need to be held accountable, everyone that was involved in this clear violation of our constitution, of course nothing will likely happen to anyone and this will be swept under the carpet, it's clear the MSM isn't saying fluff about it.

What do you think? Especially you folks that mock us when we bring up "deep state" and call us conspiracy theorists, you know who you are *cough*Gerdler*cough* LOL.

I think it's good that an appeals court has ruled that NSA surveillance violates FISA at times because, well, that's just true. What Snowden originally was a whistleblower about was also true. Annnd I think Snowden released his info thru Assange. Assange is an interesting character because after using his notoriety from the Snowden leak to acquire other data, we know from court filings that he collaborated with Republican operative Roger Stone on the timing of the release of emails and such in a direct and targeted effort to undermine the 2016 election. These are all indisputable facts and I agree that Snowden should be protected by the whistleblower protection act, especially considering his findings have officially been ruled illegal by a federal appeals court. That's some vindication for Snowden, and should it rightly hold up in a higher court, I think Snowden should absolutely be able to file for whistleblower protection.

Everything mentioned above has nothing to do with deep state conspiracies or QAnon. Aside from the fact that qanon has repeatedly misinterpreted the emails of the assange election dump, and put citizens at risk thru bullfluff theories like pizzagate. That's an extremely different thing and we can absolutely debate the ethics of the NSA citizen spy program and we probably feel the same way about it. But I dont think that proves there are democrat sex dungeons in pizza places. I think you need to see that I dont have to believe bullfluff theories from twitter to believe the findings of innumerable court filings. Very different sort of things.

Out of curiosity, how does this play to you as "the deep state getting caught?" Isnt the global sex cabal supposed to be after unseeding Trump? Why would a court filing about a 2013 incident even be related? Or is that one of those "everything is connected" youtubers spouting conjecture that makes these things related?

I never said anything about pizzagate, also lolita express happened as well and I have a feeling it is tied to pizzagate, unfortunately we won't know anything new about this since it's still "under investigation".

The fact of the matter is, you cannot trust the government nor their allies in MSM, they clearly work together, MSM actively worked with the government to undermine Julian Assange and Snowden, you cannot not see that.

You just opend pandoras box KoH.

Good

Yeah it certainly doesnt do anything good for Snowden. Like seriously none of it except this court filing. Assange working with stone and using Snowden's soap box to target the election, to me, undermined the really important messaging showden had. Assange should be arrested tho. Using foreign intelligence as a direct effort to undermine our election as detailed in Roger Stone's text messages is really heckin illegal. Nothing can really save that guy from that. Even if you're curing AIDS and cancer half the time, if you do something like that, you gotta be held accountable for your crimes. I have about as many good feels from Assange assisting whistleblowers as I have bad feels about him assisting foreign interference.

And yeah. Everyone rode lolita express. Everyone who was anyone in NYC. Gates, Trump, Clinton, Hawking etc. They were all on there. A great number of the best scientists in america hitched a ride to the last climate summit because Epstein's island was neighbouring the island of the event. Trump probably racked up frequent flyer miles because he and Jeff were good buddies. I don't think he was letting just anyone and everyone know he was sex trafficking and I think if he did, at least one of these guys like Hawking would have been like whoa. It's not like hundreds and thousands of people would have all just been chill with it. If he was free wheeling info on that plane, I think he wouldda went down much sooner.

I will agree that you can't trust the government tho. That used to make me conservative back in the day. Now it makes me a libtard and a Trump hater. Our government has persecuted the working class and benefitted the very rich for my entire life. And under trump, we see this awful payroll tax holiday, massive tax cuts for the very rich, and a significant increase in inflation not caused by productivity without a corresponding adjustment to minimum wage. He's another in a long list of guys who have taken from the poor and given to the very rich. He is one of them.

I have always said you supposedly patriotic americans are wrongly putting Snowden in the same crowd with Manning. Snowden made you safer and Manning risked the life of military personell abroad, simplified but enough.

I have always supported what Snowden did. I don't agree that wikileaks got their megaphone from Snowden leaks tho. That already happened with Manning.

Also I think things like this reject the deep state theory. Every time we have a large secretive organisation working illegally within the government they get found out sooner or later. You have way too much faith in the ability of government(to keep secrets and agree on complex agendas), and you come off as almost taking pride in having very little faith in it. In reality government fights itself and leaks like a sieve.
This has 0 to do with Pizzagate(or Pizzagate v2.0).

Also, last time we talked about this you had Pizzagate believers who still considered Snowden a traitor. The only thing you guys agree on is to disagree with the conventional story. You just can't agree with each others on what to believe instead lol.

Snowden has been portrayed as a hero by most liberal or progressive MSM for the past 7 years or so. Now you agree? because Trump changed his mind?

https://edition.cnn.com/...et-safer-wales/index.html

https://twitter.com/...72447734860218369?lang=ga
https://www.theatlantic.com/...wden-execution-tk/526821/

Obama did it. The Democratic party news organizations will not report it. Nothing will happen.

I've gotten the impression that conservative news media has been anti-snowden and the liberal leaning media has been pro-snowden if any line can be drawn that way. Maybe that has changed since Trump changed his mind on him, that was like a few months ago.

The federalist(conservative AF) publishes this:

https://thefederalist.com/...ard-snowden-useful-idiot/
https://thefederalist.com/...ght-about-edward-snowden/
https://thefederalist.com/...snowden-movie-reinforces/

And another 50 with similar messages about Snowden and those talking about him.

FOX news is the same tune mostly if you go back to the years after the leak.

Yeah. 100 percent gerdy. The narrative flips for people regarding guys like snowden or manning, or even policy like the ATF and DHS agencies worth, are at this point mind boggling. Agree with assange using Snowden's soap box as well. Pretty spot on on all accounts.

I think the right started liking Snowden right around the same time they realized Assange was assisting Stone in attempting to undermine our most democratic institution, the election, in their favor. Snowden is just a toy, but Trump's cronies all need protection to shield them from their crimes. And you cant accuse Assange of any good behavior unless you're talking about Snowden.

I don't care who goes down, I like many americans want full transparency, the media is the entity creating the narratives and pushing agendas, I guarantee you that the average american wants transparency and criminals to be prosecuted.

That is the problem when you try to label people. Generalizations are general.

Gerd just enjoys vague generalizations and strawman arguments to try and justify his hate of the west.

He has like short man syndrome or whatever the equivalent is for coming from fluffhole country like Sweden, that will be a 3rd world country before long.

Like Amerikkka? What? The rest of the world looking at us like "look at me. You are the fluffhole country now."

What country is better ? (Besides Canada if we can get rid of Trudeau)

bonus

Go away taliban!

"was" lol, as if they aren't still doing it today with a better firewall. Uncle Sam took away more of our civil liberties after 2001 than Bin Laden could have taken with a 1,000 airplanes.

Here is the deal-- if it can be tracked, it is being tracked. Don't ever doubt that.

Companies build backdoors in just for the government. Hell, the NSA (I think) knew about a Microsoft exploit to get into windows and didn't tell Microsoft for a long time! Nothing is secure. If you are that worried about it, you might as well get rid of any electronic device and live in a tent.

Technology is both a blessing and a curse at the same time, regarding privacy at least.

Do you realize we voted in a black president?

Correct!



Yes and 99.99% of people downloading apps in their phones don't actually read the "disclosure" that do tell you that they're tracking you, silicon valley is a huge part of big brother, they enable and give access to our everyday lives to with our concent, if you have Amazon, Google, Facebook, you already accepted this.

No, he's still upset the cheeto won 🤷

Here is what I would challenge you with, though. Not all of it is nefarious, and most of the time, it is to sell you more things. Sometimes you can accept it for the convenience of the technology. Just be mindful, which I can tell you are, and careful.

I appreciate the opinions of Jaron Lanier. Look him up sometime. He has had a lot of speeches about it.

This video is a good watch: https://www.youtube.com/...h?v=Np5ri-KktNs&t=18s

And I'll leave this here for those of you who think Trump is worse than Biden...

https://youtu.be/JRmlcEBAiIs

I just cant with this thread..

China can't be contained by ONE country throwing some tariffs on their goods. You need multilateralism now more than ever. But USA under Trump has alienated the rest of the west by waging/or threatening the same kind of tariffs/trade war and worse on the rest of the western world which is a really poor basis for finding common ground.

When you did the Magnitsky act, EU did the same, and those sactions hurt. Same when we put sanctions on Iran. But now EU is circumventing the sanctions on Iran that the US wants to keep up. The rift is growing, China and Russia as well as a host of other authoritarians are the benefactors.

Cuba

There is a national security state, and Trump despite his bluster is part of it. Assange *allegedly* helped him win, right? Nonetheless, because as a publisher Assange releases sensitive US intelligence, the Trump administration is prosecuting/persecuting Assange very aggressively. I don't know if KoH et al realize this.

The Trump administration is currently in the midst of an attempt to extradite Assange to the US, with hearings happening right now, to charge him with crimes for soliciting classified information (as journalists constantly do) and lock him away for life. But what do you expect when Trump has ghouls like former CIA director Mike Pompeo running State?

Despite the threat to the First Amendment and journalism in general the MSM gives relatively scant coverage to this because most of them know they will never directly challenge the US State Dept/military operations the way Assange did and thus are safe. In fact, the US press is far more likely to dutifully report lies in service of US aggression, like about WMD in Iraq, than they are to challenge it.

Fun fact, you don't actually need to install the app to use 90% of the services that we all (including me) enjoy using to add value to our lives. It takes a little more effort, but you can use almost all of those services through a browser.

Can't steal my call metadata if I don't have a phone.

I don't have any of those but Google is integrated on the phone, they're spying you by default.

Best option is those flip phones you buy use and throw out, do they still exist? Burn phones is what they're called?

not really sure if you understand what a "burn" phone means.

flip phone or not, it just has to lack the ability to use gps.. and has a easily replaceable sim card with replacements that you can use if need be..

but definatly doesnt have to be a "flip" phone just cheap and replaceable..

If the phone doesn't have GPS they can still find you and where you travel through cell tower triangulation, no?

that's true, but tower triangulation isn't easy to do, takes time and can also be negated if you are elevated also.. and only gives "rough" area's of where your location is. but GPS can in point to within a meter, quickly and easily.

I was under the impression that tower triangulation only takes time in movies. And that it only requires a call in movies.

Your cell phone pings nearby cell towers every few seconds right? And the strength of those signals along with those pings are stored as retrievable data right? I'm sure theres some calculations needed, and they take several microseconds, maybe even milliseconds. :)

So if they have access to this data and know how to sort out your phone from the rest of the data, they will know approximatly where you are and also where you have been and when even if you had turned off/broken/no GPS.

That's why you go to wal-mart and buy a burner phone with cash!

Its also a requirement to snap it in half and throw it in the trash after you make one 3 min call.

Yeah thought so, I've seen that in many movies....

So, you're phone doesn't tell the other towers that it has a connection to them, because only one is required to make a call/have a mobile internet connection.. Also if you connect to a 2g Network (suitable for phonecalls) your phone may ONLY be in contact with one tower at the time.. were as 4g with full bandwidth would require multiple tower sites.

The bit that takes time is they have to "track" you individually.. towers cant just be set to look for a certian MAC address in an instant, they require having their logs/accesses checked individual.. so yes if they knew you were in one area, they may have to check 6 towers, then there is the ping time.. that can take time.. First they find, then they need you to remain connected (ideally on a phonecall or internet connection) so they can pin point your location using the ping system.. which is why elevation stuffs it up a lot.. Ping's require a phone that is also set up for it, if you were to set up your phone in a safe way you could get away with it not having any responce to ping's and once the connection is severed it asks for a new connection.. a bit like IRC does to know people have dropped off the network..

However if you have gps enabled your phone carrier would "ask" for your location when ever it has a stable connection so that it can better cater to your needs by ensuring the data signal in your direction is strong enough that you can hit multiple towers at once.

Lol and the idea here is that they could never find the item once it has been destroied to show them things like fingerprints/call logs.. but really with enough telcom data they could know that stuff without finding the actual phone.. though i feel if you wanted them not to catch you you would ideally toss it in another car driving away from you and they would chase their tail looking for you.. when they know you actually called "said" suspicious phone number.

Yup, or tie the phone to a stray dog ....

stray dog, lol yeah that could work too..

Or into a lake

the idea is to have authorities leave you alone.. why would ditching it in the lake do that? they'd never find it and would just use another method to catch you..

Yeah, get creative, galli!!!

I want to post here, but then I would have to actually agree with Gerd on something. How could I maintain a follow around Gerd and disagree with what he says if I see eye to eye on something!

So I disagree with the way he posted that truth up there.

I retract everything I just said and insist on the opposite.

The world is round again!

You're so blind, Gerd! (Insert something about foreigners). Um.....what else. Reading comprehension?? ya reading comprehension.

You better knock this off, or I might start to dislike little about what you say.