Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric yesterday.

They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions.

Experts Fault Reasoning in Surveillance Decision - New York Times

“Consequently, the court finds defendants’ arguments that they cannot defend this case without the use of classified information to be disingenuous and without merit,” she wrote.

NYT article linked for brevity. Full decision here.

The decision basically follows the contours of the open letter to Congress from prominent legal scholars from February.

Some favorite quotes:

All of the above Congressional concessions to Executive need and to the exigencies of our present situation as a people, however, have been futile. The wiretapping program here in litigation has undisputedly been continued for at least five years, it has undisputedly been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title III, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The President of the United States is himself created by that same Constitution.

Basically she is saying that FISA balances Article II and Amendment 4, and the President's argument that Article II makes FISA unconstitutional, or, at least, ignorable, disregards Amendment 4, and thus is obviously incorrect.

I also like this:

As Justice Warren wrote in U.S. v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967):

Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending
those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would
indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would
sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile. Id. at 264.

Perhaps this point of view is now considered "liberal." Conservatives tend to define the republic in personal identity terms rather then in terms of the system it implements.

Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping - New York Times

The TSA screeners at SFO (San Francisco International Airport) are handing out these stickers to deserving young travelers.

The TSA must figure they'll need more searchers in the future, so they're starting the kids off thinking about it now.

Saffo: Junior TSA Screener

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Cnet offers a few selected AOL users and their search terms. This is a very interesting window into imperfect human lives.

The secrets people whisper to Google

Later, on the same day Kennelly's opinion was filed, the Department of Justice sent out Tice's subpoena. The date on the subpoena is July 20th, before Kennelly's decision was filed, but the issue in the Terkel case was so pregnant that it would be easy for the government to anticipate the ruling and only issue the subpoena to Tice if necessary. It has now become necessary, and the government seems to be moving to put pressure on Tice not to reveal information that would confirm the electronic surveillance program at issue in Terkel by threatening him with investigation and possible indictment.

27B Stroke 6: Government threatenning potential NSA whistle blowers

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

27B Stroke 6 blogged this yesterday but didn't link the actual story they were quoting. Its worth clicking through to some of the other stories at the bottom of this story. Basically, the Atlanta Air Marshall Director has quit his job and is raising a public stir about bad policies at the Air Marshal's service.

TheDenverChannel.com - News - Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

FBI proposes Internet CALEA

FBI plans new Net-tapping push | Tech News on ZDNet

It was data retention that emerged as the issue of most concern to the committee...

“Currently, there is no federal law and no industry standard. This is seriously hindering investigations,” said U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. “If investigators can't get the information they need to connect an IP address to a person then too often the case hits a dead end. The perpetrator is not going to be caught, and the child victim is not rescued from a childhood of unfathomable sexual abuse. This is a terrible problem and we need to fix it and fix it now.”

The dipshits in Congress are planning to use child abuse as an excuse to turn the Internet into a surveillance system. They are gunning for a federal law this year that will mandate that ISPs maintain logs of everyone's DNS requests, IPs, and in and outbound email in the event that at some point in the future someone accuses you of some sort of wrongdoing. This applies to any kind of criminal accusation or civil case and not just child abuse, of course.

The Committee on Energy and Commerce

The judge in the EFF's surveillance case against AT&T handed out a last-minute homework assignment Tuesday -- a list of 11 written questions (.pdf) that attorneys on all three sides of the case "should be prepared to address" by Friday morning's oral arguments.

This is very suprising, IMHO!

27B Stroke 6 - Judge in AT&T v. EFF case looks critically at State Secrets claim

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers' personal data with government officials.

AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours