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Humanities Section => Political/Government General Discussion => Topic started by: stromboli on June 10, 2013, 10:31:40 PM

Title: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: stromboli on June 10, 2013, 10:31:40 PM
http://www.scribd.com/doc/146930457/PRISM-Class (http://www.scribd.com/doc/146930457/PRISM-Class)

 
QuotePlaintiff, Larry Klayman, a former U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor, and PlaintiffsCharles and Mary Ann Strange (collectively "Plaintiffs") bring this action on their own behalf and on behalf of a class of persons defined below. Plaintiffs hereby sue Barack Hussein Obama,Eric Holder, Keith B. Alexander, Lowell McAdam, Roger Vinson, Verizon Communications, theU.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ"), and the National Security Agency ("NSA"), (collectively"Defendants"), in their personal and official capacities, for violating Plaintiffs' constitutionalrights, Plaintiffs' reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and association, right to be freeof unreasonable searches and seizures, and due process rights, as well as certain common lawclaims, for directly and proximately causing Plaintiffs mental and physical pain and suffering

QuoteThis is an action for violations of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the U.S.Constitution. This is also an action for violations of privacy, including intrusion uponseclusion, freedom of expression and association, due process, and other illegal acts.Plaintiffs bring this action on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated consumers,users, and U.S. citizens who are customers and users of Defendant Verizon Communications("Verizon").

Legal brief. The legal minds on the forum can dissect this. I already stated that PRISM is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment. 1st Amendment is a given, as well. Let me here also state that this will be thrown out because the Patriot Act will be cited and *National Security* will be the reason.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: AllPurposeAtheist on June 10, 2013, 11:05:13 PM
Well kids, when Mitt or his empty suit replacement takes over in 2016 you'll long for the good ol days of mere spying that's been going on since forever..

This isn't anywhere near as bad as it's made out to be and just how the hell have these people 'suffered' by big bad gubnit looking into who they call?
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: BarkAtTheMoon on June 11, 2013, 12:12:05 AM
Quote from: "AllPurposeAtheist"Well kids, when Mitt or his empty suit replacement takes over in 2016 you'll long for the good ol days of mere spying that's been going on since forever..

This isn't anywhere near as bad as it's made out to be and just how the hell have these people 'suffered' by big bad gubnit looking into who they call?

Yep. I wonder what exactly everyone thinks the NSA and CIA does and has been doing for decades. *hint* THIS!! This is exactly the stuff they do, what they've always done, and what their stated purpose is. SigInt. Spying. Is everyone suddenly naive 12 year olds? They've just moved on to modern technology like everyone else. I'd bet they do a lot less creepy and nasty stuff now than they could get away with in the past, especially during the cold war, when nobody would bat an eye. I'd have been more surprised and a little disappointed if they weren't doing it. And guess what, in your favorite country, the intelligence agencies there are doing the exact same things.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: AllPurposeAtheist on June 11, 2013, 08:08:24 AM
Well FUCK! Now the NSA will know you called in sick when you were really just watching My Little Pony! Fucking spys!
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Thumpalumpacus on June 11, 2013, 10:06:26 AM
PRISM is just one more datum demonstrating that the Obama Administration is just like every other administration, hungry to expand the power of government at the expense of the rights of the citizenry.

I'm not so blithe as the previous posters about the continual erosion of our rights. The idea that the government should be entitled to eavesdrop on our private communications is sickening, to me.  Justifying everything with the War on TerrorĀ® seems to be in line with Orwell's prediction of a continual war used to justify the removal of rights.  

I'm surprised to see such sentiments dismissing these concerns at a free-thought forum, of all places.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: stromboli on June 11, 2013, 10:33:29 AM
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"PRISM is just one more datum demonstrating that the Obama Administration is just like every other administration, hungry to expand the power of government at the expense of the rights of the citizenry.

I'm not so blithe as the previous posters about the continual erosion of our rights. The idea that the government should be entitled to eavesdrop on our private communications is sickening, to me.  Justifying everything with the War on TerrorĀ® seems to be in line with Orwell's prediction of a continual war used to justify the removal of rights.  

I'm surprised to see such sentiments dismissing these concerns at a free-thought forum, of all places.

I'm with Thump on this one. There needs to be as strong an outcry and an objection as possible. Most people, according to various surveys, are against the Patriot Act and the limitations of civil rights it represents. Shrugging your shoulders and saying "well, that's the way it is" is not the answer.

QuoteRomans 13:1
"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."
Words for sheep.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: missingnocchi on June 11, 2013, 11:08:59 AM
Quote from: "BarkAtTheMoon"Yep. I wonder what exactly everyone thinks the NSA and CIA does and has been doing for decades. *hint* THIS!! This is exactly the stuff they do, what they've always done, and what their stated purpose is. SigInt. Spying. Is everyone suddenly naive 12 year olds? They've just moved on to modern technology like everyone else. I'd bet they do a lot less creepy and nasty stuff now than they could get away with in the past, especially during the cold war, when nobody would bat an eye. I'd have been more surprised and a little disappointed if they weren't doing it. And guess what, in your favorite country, the intelligence agencies there are doing the exact same things.
It's been going on forever, so it must be right! Like slavery!

Seriously, how docile do you have to be not to feel threatened by this, and not to want to do something about it? The federal government has, during the Bush and Obama administrations, given itself the power to listen in on any phone conversation in the country, and arrest anyone they please to secretly, without a trial, and indefinitely, all without a warrant. To not do anything about that when you know it's happening is to put your life into the hands of the government with the faith that all of our presidents will always be good guys. If we end up electing someone with dictatorial ambitions, which can happen and has happened before, they would have all the tools they need to subjugate political opponents and nip resistance in the bud. This could very well be our last chance to save the country, and even if it isn't, a day will come when all of this power is used against us. If I'm wrong and every leader America ever has in the future only has our best interests at heart, wonderful. But that's a lot of faith to have in a political office that, by its nature, attracts only the most ambitious people in the country.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Jason Harvestdancer on June 11, 2013, 11:37:49 AM
Quote from: "AllPurposeAtheist"Well kids, when Mitt or his empty suit replacement takes over in 2016 you'll long for the good ol days of mere spying that's been going on since forever..

This isn't anywhere near as bad as it's made out to be and just how the hell have these people 'suffered' by big bad gubnit looking into who they call?

Yep.  As long as the right party is doing it, it's all ok.  That's why this isn't a big issue.  And in a few years it won't be a big issue for the Republicans anymore, but suddenly it will be an issue for you again.

The way it isn't an issue right now.  Because the right party is doing it.  Not because it's wrong, but simply because of who is doing it.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Jmpty on June 11, 2013, 11:48:34 AM
I don't feel threatened by PRISM, because I have read the details of the program. The guy who who revealed this program should be tried for treason. It's very easy to circumvent this program, once you know it exists, so it has been rendered useless.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: stromboli on June 11, 2013, 12:03:39 PM
I don't feel threatened either. I am as safe as can be. I don't own a smart phone (yet) and don't do much on the internet except research and places like this forum. But the not feeling threatened part is the whole idea. Keep people not feeling threatened until the belated truth is that authorities have power over you that you didn't know they had, and your civil rights become less and less.

The idea is to challenge authority to let them know they are being watched. When you allow authorities to ignore foundational laws like the 1st and 4th Amendment, at some point they will assume that they can continue to do more and be more intrusive in your life. Sooner or later you have to make a statement. Sooner is always better.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Colanth on June 11, 2013, 02:51:20 PM
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"I'm surprised to see such sentiments dismissing these concerns at a free-thought forum, of all places.
Remember, though, this is atheistforums, not freedom_from_government_oppression_forums.  The only thing all of us share in common is lack of belief in deities.  I would hope that none of us is in favor of dictatorships, but that's not a requirement of not believing in gods.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Jason Harvestdancer on June 11, 2013, 02:55:13 PM
I see a lot of people saying they don't feel threatened because it's not happening to them.  Not a very good position in my opinion.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Jmpty on June 11, 2013, 03:05:43 PM
Quote from: "Jason_Harvestdancer"I see a lot of people saying they don't feel threatened because it's not happening to them.  Not a very good position in my opinion.

Ummm, what exactly is not happening to them? Or what is happening to anyone that is causing some sort of harm? Someone is saving data which contains the phone numbers you have called. So? My phone company does that already. Is that secret?
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: AllPurposeAtheist on June 11, 2013, 03:11:19 PM
I don't feel threatened at all. In fact I'm happy our government is at least trying to keep tabs on the shitheads of the world. Maybe you feel more threatened by the government listening in as you make a feeble attempt at seducing some girl or man on the phone at 2am than I do, but that's your problem, not mine.
I feel far more threatened by shit that has happened to me, cops, jail and courts than some national security analyst looking at phone records to who I might or might not have called.
I get paranoid about silly shit at times, but this ain't one of them.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: FrankDK on June 11, 2013, 05:49:17 PM
> PRISM is just one more datum demonstrating that the Obama Administration is just like every other administration, hungry to expand the power of government at the expense of the rights of the citizenry.

I confess, I'm really disappointed in Obama, although the disappointment has been a long time growing.  As disappointing as this is, at least it puts the lie to those who claim he is the most liberal president in history.  In fact, he's right of center, like just about all of our recent chief executives.

Frank
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: Colanth on June 11, 2013, 06:51:18 PM
Quote from: "FrankDK"> PRISM is just one more datum demonstrating that the Obama Administration is just like every other administration, hungry to expand the power of government at the expense of the rights of the citizenry.

I confess, I'm really disappointed in Obama, although the disappointment has been a long time growing.  As disappointing as this is, at least it puts the lie to those who claim he is the most liberal president in history.  In fact, he's right of center, like just about all of our recent chief executives.

Frank
Obama is left of center, but the center passed Goldwater on its way to the right.  Old Barry would have been a staunch leftist these days.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: BarkAtTheMoon on June 11, 2013, 11:55:25 PM
Quote from: "Jmpty"
Quote from: "Jason_Harvestdancer"I see a lot of people saying they don't feel threatened because it's not happening to them.  Not a very good position in my opinion.

Ummm, what exactly is not happening to them? Or what is happening to anyone that is causing some sort of harm? Someone is saving data which contains the phone numbers you have called. So? My phone company does that already. Is that secret?

And they already sell it to any company who wants it for marketing and demographics purposes.

This whole thing is much ado about nothing. All of these so called scandals have been. When absurd rhetoric like "This could very well be our last chance to save the country" is tossed around as if it's a serious concern and all the completely wrong statements about what the PRISM program actually is overwhelms the facts it makes the whole discussion meaningless. Any real facts of the matter have been lost in a sea of bullshit. The fact of the matter is that nobody will ever listen to your phone conversations. I assure you and if they did they'd probably just be chuckling over some dumb shit you said to your girlfriend or whoever. Nobody will even ever look at the numbers and date/times of your personal phone calls. Anybody who knows a thing about large databases knows 99.9+% of this data will never be looked at by a human eye. It'll go through an algorithm that searches for patterns, phone numbers with known terrorist affiliations on watch lists, calls to flagged nations that support terrorism, etc and weeds out as many people like us and most of the world who do nothing wrong as possible. Anything else would be a GIANT WASTE OF FUCKING TIME. If some NSA geek is found to be fucking around with your phone calls, he's wasting his time at work, most likely breaking department regulations, and will most likely be punished for it up to and including being fired.

Over the course of my career I've had access to financial and personal information of somewhere in the range of 50 million different people between all the places I've worked. I don't look at individual records unless I need to for work reasons (or happen across one that's funny or interesting for whatever reason), and why? Because I don't give a shit about Joe Schmoe's credit card history, just like the NSA guys writing code to parse these phone records. I'm just a guy behind a desk just like the guys at NSA, I've no intention of using the information for illegal purposes and I'd obviously get fired and probably arrested if I did, and I have better things to do than wasting my time looking up some dumbfuck nobody in Shitdick, Arkansas. That's why I'm not at all worried about this.

The government isn't some singular hivemind evil entity. The vast, vast majority of federal employees (like virtually all, statistically speaking) are just like you and me, going to work and sitting in a cubicle every day for their 9 to 5, chit chatting with their coworkers over lunch, then going home at the end of the day to their family. They're not politicians. A lot of the ones at NSA and CIA aren't even really spies, just very intelligent analysts sitting at a desk in some office in Ft. Meade or Langley. This is why these grand conspiracies never come to pass. It takes many, many normal people, your neighbors, doing horrible evil, and depends on fictional dictatorial powers of the president and his administration, ignoring the checks and balances of the branches and regulations of these agencies, and the executive branch completely micromanaging every aspect of the government. It's absurd, it's naive, it's stupid, and it ain't happening.
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: PopeyesPappy on June 12, 2013, 12:26:25 AM
Sales of Orwell's '1984' up over 6,000 percent after NSA news (//http://www.today.com/news/sales-orwells-1984-over-6-000-percent-after-nsa-news-6C10282307)

Imagine that
Title: Re: Class Action Lawsuit of Obama, NSA Over PRISM
Post by: missingnocchi on June 12, 2013, 09:45:33 AM
Quote from: "BarkAtTheMoon"And they already sell it to any company who wants it for marketing and demographics purposes.
Marketing companies which, notably, do not have the power to arrest anyone without a trial indefinitely.

QuoteThis whole thing is much ado about nothing. All of these so called scandals have been. When absurd rhetoric like "This could very well be our last chance to save the country" is tossed around as if it's a serious concern and all the completely wrong statements about what the PRISM program actually is overwhelms the facts it makes the whole discussion meaningless. Any real facts of the matter have been lost in a sea of bullshit. The fact of the matter is that nobody will ever listen to your phone conversations. I assure you and if they did they'd probably just be chuckling over some dumb shit you said to your girlfriend or whoever. Nobody will even ever look at the numbers and date/times of your personal phone calls. Anybody who knows a thing about large databases knows 99.9+% of this data will never be looked at by a human eye. It'll go through an algorithm that searches for patterns, phone numbers with known terrorist affiliations on watch lists, calls to flagged nations that support terrorism, etc and weeds out as many people like us and most of the world who do nothing wrong as possible. Anything else would be a GIANT WASTE OF FUCKING TIME. If some NSA geek is found to be fucking around with your phone calls, he's wasting his time at work, most likely breaking department regulations, and will most likely be punished for it up to and including being fired.

Over the course of my career I've had access to financial and personal information of somewhere in the range of 50 million different people between all the places I've worked. I don't look at individual records unless I need to for work reasons (or happen across one that's funny or interesting for whatever reason), and why? Because I don't give a shit about Joe Schmoe's credit card history, just like the NSA guys writing code to parse these phone records. I'm just a guy behind a desk just like the guys at NSA, I've no intention of using the information for illegal purposes and I'd obviously get fired and probably arrested if I did, and I have better things to do than wasting my time looking up some dumbfuck nobody in Shitdick, Arkansas. That's why I'm not at all worried about this.
Yes, because it's the desk monkeys I'm worried about. I'm just so paranoid that they might take over America by listening to my conversations in their free time! This absolutely addresses anyone's concerns in meaningful way.

Seriously, though, do you actually believe that THIS is what people are worried about? We're worried about what their BOSSES will do with this power. The leaders of the country, not some lackey at a computer. How do you think dictatorships happen, Batm? Sometimes it's through a coup, sure, but other times it happens when a democratically elected leader uses his power to silence political opposition. Hitler is the obvious go-to example of this, but they exist in modern times as well. Vladimir Putin and Robert Mugabe both fit the bill. These are the kind of people we are worried about. If the president wants information on a specific political opponent, all he needs is the friendship of the Director of the NSA, his employee. If he wants to arrest said political opponent without a trial, he only needs to name him terrorist and order it to be done. This is the framework we're setting up here.

QuoteThe government isn't some singular hivemind evil entity. The vast, vast majority of federal employees (like virtually all, statistically speaking) are just like you and me, going to work and sitting in a cubicle every day for their 9 to 5, chit chatting with their coworkers over lunch, then going home at the end of the day to their family. They're not politicians. A lot of the ones at NSA and CIA aren't even really spies, just very intelligent analysts sitting at a desk in some office in Ft. Meade or Langley. This is why these grand conspiracies never come to pass. It takes many, many normal people, your neighbors, doing horrible evil, and depends on fictional dictatorial powers of the president and his administration, ignoring the checks and balances of the branches and regulations of these agencies, and the executive branch completely micromanaging every aspect of the government. It's absurd, it's naive, it's stupid, and it ain't happening.
It really doesn't require all that. Do you think every single member of the NSA knows exactly what ends they are working towards at all times? The fact that most of them are just regular guys like you and me would indicate that they do not. And frankly, if the NSA can set up an entire telecom surveillance system without anyone reporting it for 6 years, I don't think the people involved generally have an issue with taking orders and shutting up.

All this assumes that you really do need a lot of people to commit evil acts using this technology. Well, literally speaking, you do. Lots of people running tech support and whatnot. But once the data is there, it should only take a handful of people at the most to find out who the dissidents are and subjugate them.