But what do I know? I'm just a schmuck who happens to believe normal people can read and interpret the constitution on their own.
Say you have 5 arrests warrants for members of a gang, you often can't arrest them all the once so here is where the "secret" comes into play when they are arrested and the arrest is maintained confidential for 24-48 hours depending on the jurisdiction.
This is done to prevent the rest from scattering into hiding as soon as the news of one or more of them getting arrested breaks, this also means they won't hold down somewhere and be ready for a fight, or even go and do something worse like take hostages in order to try to get out of dodge.
This also means that in some rights are withheld for the duration of the "gag order" like access to a phone or an attorney, however the police is not allowed to question or formally charge the subjects during that period either, so while there is some violation of rights it is not egregious.
To be fair, what if two people did that and disagreed?
An infamous case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
It performed under section 1021 of the original National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012), which has been upheld as constitutional by an appellate court, a ruling which the supreme court declined to subsequently hear.
"Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law."
Hedges v. Obama did not affirm the constitutionality of that law, but rather that that plaintiff did not have a sufficient interest in that provision in order to ensure that they would present the best case that can be made, which is important because US Court's follow precedent. If you'd like to read more, look for the constitutional requirement of Standing.
There's no statute or authority or even articles at ACLU or in law journals I can find that suggest that federal law enforcement can detain US citizens without counsel in "secret arrests", or, for that matter, suspend habeas.
Obviously: they can do that. But it's a very big deal when they do. They had to back off charges from Jose Padilla because of how they mishandled that case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
... under the NDAA "an American citizen can be detained forever without trial, while the allegations against you go uncontested because you have no right to see them"
https://lawfare.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/staging/2016/Mart...
EDIT: Yeah, Martin is not even being charged with unauthorized disclosure. Not ShadowBrokers, sorry to burst everyone's bubble.
Here's his house: https://www.google.com/maps/place/7+Harvard+Rd,+Glen+Burnie,...
Yes, it's not cryptographic-level security, but it raises the costs of an attack. In the real world, that matters.
Also consider that not all attacks are spy-vs-spy. This could be a case of 'keeping honest people honest', i.e.: making it sufficiently difficult to dissuade the majority of political activists and/or protesters. This is the same reason why padlocks are a thing.
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=4%20harvard%20road%...
On account of (a) unjust governments being more likely to abuse power than just ones, (b) unjust governments are more dangerous than unjust actors and (c) the belief that just governments are plausible, I would say "more".
If you live under an unjust government, their curtailed power is a plus. If you live under a just government, your threat profile from unjust governments is decreased. The threat from unjust actors may increase, but that is a fair trade-off per (b).
Collecting attack weapons, but letting your defense rot is a strategy which might work in computer games.
Apparently they do it anyway.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/government-contractor-cha...
I also understand that some people think that no one should have this power and want to stop it. I wish that, if you feel this way, you renounce your citizenship and find another country that acts as you believe they should and just leave the other country alone, unless you feel they are threatening you or those you love and you must do something about it, and even then only if can do something to help in a way that won't hurt anyone now or in the future. Yes, I know it's not always that easy.
But, if you live in a country, through your taxes and your citizenship, you pay for and are recipient of the work of people whose job it is to protect us and all other citizens of your country. And if you didn't know how they defended you, you do now. It isn't always pretty, to say it lightly.
I don't want people to do bad things in the name of good or defense. It'd be better if every country had a large number of grown up boy scouts to protect that country in the most honorable way possible. But, we have what we have. Sure go ahead- expose it if you want, but the more you harm it, the more you'll end up with a group of people that are even more secretive and do things even worse to try to ensure that security. I really don't want that to happen. Things need to get better instead!
Many in the US say that we need to protect people from themselves, and then criticize or harm those trying to protect us. Why?
I used to be much more paranoid and just group people into the "trying to hurt me" bracket. But I grew up. I realized that almost everyone in the world I meet wants to do good or at least has a motivation to try to accomplish something they believe is right.
So, only some of it. The rest was up to date then. And the old stuff is helpful for figuring out how they think.
> "For the N.S.A., which spent two years and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars repairing the damage done by Mr. Snowden, "
Sure sounds like a plausible candidate considering what Shadow Brokers were touting.
http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-nsa...
This would explain how the Russians ended up with the source code for TAO's toys.
That's ludicrous. You'd be an idiot to ever suggest that the NSA wasn't penetrated at any given time somewhere by some foreign power's own spy agency. Design for the failure that's going to happen, not the perfection that never will.
He knows his stuff. And he's dismissive and rude. The former forgives the latter, for me.
http://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-leaker...
"he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments"
"different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft"
What's next, NYtimes, calling people "rats" for reporting a homicide?
It's one thing to call attention to warrantless wiretapping and unconstitutional practices. It's an entirely different thing to take and distribute the source code of a tool used to access foreign government systems. The former is illegal the latter is literally the reason why the NSA was created.
Thats not whistleblowing.
the US Government is playing a different game right now. Play time is over.
(One or two documents had classified sections, which were labeled with small (c) marks. The document should have had big CLASSIFIED marks, but since it didn't, missing a (c) next to a paragraph is not an arrestable offense)
I'm saying this as if this was Russia and he was a Russian infosec guy, I wouldn't put it past the NSA TAO to go do just that.
The biggest change might simply be that they need to start doing unambiguous good or their workers will keep leaking stuff.
http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-nsa...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-jul...
This is a lot of obfuscation. What happened here? How did they smear him?
> From the external actions of the characters who oversee the legal professionals who are drafted into service in these secret systems, they definitely have their own, uh, interpretation of law and ethics.
I am friends with some ex-IC guys; from their stories they appear closed in rank more than police, and are indoctrinated to the point that they see themselves as the paladins of American values and democracy. In reality, they are usually only upholding the interests of the powerful, where corporate interest and political value coincide, and those with real power know and reinforce this. To see this is too much cognitive dissonance for the ones that aren't secretly there just because they get off on the power.
The paranoia and the power trip are good at reinforcing the "us vs. everyone" mentality that we know is pretty dangerous psychologically.
Additional: Abuse is seductive. Abuse from power is absolutely seductive.
In the year of pokemon go players everywhere? And even then, who cares about a person with a mobile phone? We're a good decade after anyone is a "strange man" when taking photos anywhere. You don't even have to show yourself. Just order a cab and go through that street without stopping.
> dissuade the majority of political activists and/or protesters
I'm not convinced. The only thing the blurring did was prove that this is the interesting house, rather than a name coincidence. What is that supposed to dissuade me from if I was already going to go there and do something potentially illegal?
And — also — not whistleblowing, because nothing he has alleged is illegal.
At least one surveillance program revealed by Snowden has been challenged in US courts and found to be illegal, whether any others revealed were illegal remains a disputed point.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadat...
A federal court disagreed to that in 2015 [PDF]:
Didn't James Earl Jones address this idea in "Sneakers"?
"We're the US government: we don't do that sort of thing!"
No, they don't either in principal (the application in the text is much broader than specifically al-Qaeda -- it includes al-Qaeda, the Taliban, "associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners", and other who commit a belligerent act against the US or its coalition partners that is seen to be "in aid to" those organizations), nor in practice, because the specific allegations justifying the detention need not be disclosed, nor even the specific detention publicly disclosed, and detentions under the act, while they permit trial by military tribunal, do not require any juridical process or access to counsel to be provided -- that's rather the point of indefinite detention -- there's essentially no practical boundary to their application (if some sympathetic third party becomes aware of the detention, its possible they might be the subject of habeas corpus proceedings, which would require some showing that there was reason to believe that the person was within the fairly broad scope in the text of the act, but that's by no means a certainty in any particular detention.)
You might also look at Obama's signing statement of the NDAA for more evidence for that argument.
The longer ones are usually to protect the arrestee if they are being put into protective custody / witness protection or are released as an informant.
Since this is national security related who knows, I don't even know if these cases have been brought up to the supreme court before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...
A piece of paper and its surrounding political philosophy may empowering in theory but is decidedly not in practice. At the end of it all, it is the threat of adverse action, hopefully through re-election or worst-case through violence, that keeps power in check. The majority is too unwilling or too ignorant to oust those that are given the power to strictly enforce the philosophy, and thus the Constitution is emasculated.
That being said, I do think we whould always be wary of police and generally question the government. It's important we keep into perspective what's actually a threat and whats just unfortunate. Both should be improved, but one (the NSA) can prevent any sort of improvement, the police shooting rate seems to be more of an over reaction and mistake that almost everyone agrees should be fixed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/through-the-wormhole/...
And so, in giving a democratic Government ridiculous amounts of power, we give it power to harm pretty much any minority it chooses, so long as it doesn't piss off too many other people.
But the law is not equally applied in the US, though it's more often here a case of being powerful than being rich. See how General Petraeus was treated (for retaining eight notebooks full of "highly sensitive information" and giving them to his biographer/paramour) compared to Stephen Kim (who discussed one classified report about North Korea with a reporter): the former was fined, the latter was jailed.[0]
Now, Kim has since been released due to the outcry over the disparity of the sentences, so in this case the subversion of the rule of law coupled with public pressure ended up working out. But that is not an inspiring system. It did little for instance to help Jeffrey Sterling[1] (charged with espionage, in part for doing something that sounds a lot like what Hillary Clinton did with her emails).
This is to say nothing of things that have gone the other way, such as a complete lack of prosecution for those behind the 2008 financial crisis, retroactive telecom immunity, etc. The message that this sends is, "The rule of law applies to you unless you are close enough or important enough to whoever is in power." Which is not really the rule of law at all.
[0]https://theintercept.com/2015/03/03/petraeus-plea-deal-revea...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling#Con...
More importantly, these powerful people effectively write the laws themselves - why break a law when you can simply cause whatever action you wish to take to become legal?
Torturing prisoners? Crashing the world's financial system? Spying on millions of Americans without any kind of warrant? Lying about the spying to congress? All no problem! Just make up a law and get it passed, or if you forgot to do that, get retroactive immunity granted or just ask the President to pardon you directly.
The only thing that matters is how much power (influence, force, money etc.) you can bring to bear and who your opponents are. Law is irrelevant. To put it in plainer terms: people who own nuclear weapons don't have to pay their parking tickets.
Of course, just as you might look like the article's Socrates for suggesting free markets of law, you'd look even more like him for suggesting that maybe some issues are best resolved through means other than markets or monopolies.
No, I'm respodning to you as if you were making an inaccurate fact claim about the NDAA, which you were, whether you refer to what the act says on its face or, even moreso, what the practical result of the authority in the act is.
> I am saying it does not apply here
No, that's not what you said that I responded to. Had you said that, I would not have responded as I did. In any case, theft of secrets in aid of an enemy is a belligerent act, so (even if subsequent investigation ruled out that the acts were done in support of al-Qaeda), were the Administration to, in good faith, believe that the acts were carried out on behalf of or in aid of al-Qaeda, the act here would fall within the ambit of the bare text of the NDAA.
(It wouldn't fall within the requirements of PPD-14, but PPD-14 by its own terms addresses only executive policy on the applicability military custody requirement of Section 1022 of the NDAA, a requirement which applies to a subset of the population for which indefinite detention is authorized by Section 1021 of the NDAA.)
Note I am not saying that the administration treated this as a detention under the NDAA, merely that the concept that the NDAA could -- consistent with the text of the Act -- have been applied here is not at all farfetched.
Again, also, please take a moment to read Obama's NDAA signing statement. He is still the President.
I'm not. I'm saying if, at some stage of the investigation it was believed that he did, then even if that was later determined not to be true and regular criminal charges in the civilian justice system were determined to be appropriate, the NDAA detention provisions could have been applied at that earlier stage. Since the whole NDAA discussion was about what the "secret arrest" that preceded the publicly-revealed charges means, while I absolutely don't believe the NDAA was applied or that that was what was actually referred to, nevertheless, its not a categorically implausible interpretation.
> Again, also, please take a moment to read Obama's NDAA signing statement.
I have. If you'd like to make an argument about its specific relevance (as you have so far, notably, not done, despite vaguely waving your hand in its general direction), please feel free to do so.
The signing statement says basically two things of significance: (1) That Section 1021 authorizing indefinite detention is unnecessary and duplicative of the authority already existing in inherent executive powers and the 9/11 AUMF, and (2) That Section 1022, seeking to mandate military custody for certain of those detained under the power referred to in Section 1021 seeks to impose an inappropriate constraint on executive discretion as to how detainees are held, but that its text provides enough flexibly for a minimally-acceptable interpretation which preserves substantial executive discretion (which Obama that implemented as the executive interpretation through PPD-14, which I've referenced earlier, and which, in any case, is irrelevant since, whether or not 1021 could have applied in this case, its clear that 1022 -- and thus Obama's reservations about the NDAA beyond that it restates existing authority, and the interpretations in PPD-14 -- would not apply.)
110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified”
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-b...
I want Hillary to win as much as the next reasonable person, but that doesn't mean she didn't mess up.
There were dozens of classified emails that were in fact classified at the time they were sent. Some of which were Top Secret. Some of which were even Special Access Programs.
Whether something is marked or not is actually irrelevant. Part of her responsibility and this contractor's responsibility under the clearance agreement is to identify classified content regardless of markings.
Discussing classified matters through an insecure method is a far cry from physically taking documents home, not least because it's clear the discussions were being undertaken as part of her official duties. Taking documents home is a lot more ambiguous as to intent.
It is identical. He is being accused of moving classified information to unauthorised locations. She moved information to unauthorised locations. She literally had people send classified information to the basement of her home.
Plus I'd argue that sending classified information to an insecure server is a far bigger threat to national security. Even if he got robbed on the way home the overall scope is lower than if the server gets broken into by foreign entities.
Really? So you can just delete all the classification labels and send the document to a yahoo account. Look no labels, so it is fine? You better ask your friendly Security Officer about that (actually don't you'll be highly suspicious doing that).
She had 10 or so TS/SCI satellite images in there. Other people would go to jail for that...
She deliberately set up her own separate server, that wasn't an oops I slipped, one doesn't accidentally stumble and end up with a separate email server. Then classified documents up to TS/SCI were found on that server. Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.
"So yeah, Jim, I just set up my own work email server at my house, just send work email there". "Oh, you found some satellite images there? You think you got me, however, see, classification markings are not there so it's fine"
Have managed email servers. Can confirm. Would be more likely to arrive at Mordor on foot.
> Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.
Well, one kind of did, but we like him. He's one of us.
Now clearly it is at best highly naive to think that a server handling the kind of volume of email that the Secretary of State would receive, much of it from people handling classified information, is going to be able to stay 100% free of classified contamination.
Partisan political actors are quick to redefine the problem as 'labeled as classified' and make claims about intentions, etc.
The state department has recovered emails sent and received to her (for official functions) which she failed to turn over. This is in the FBI's report and also in the private lawsuit filed by the Republican group.
Well, actually... no, I don't find needles scary.
To be scared is an emotional response, and you can't really tell pother people what their emotions are.
Well, they could say he was a member of Al Qaeda, too. What couldn't they do? If we want to stipulate a lawless government, why bother mentioning the NDAA at all? They could just drone strike him.
The NDAA has nothing to do with this story. I don't know why you're so diligently trying to make the case that it does.
Mostly, I'm saying that "sure, they may have determined now that is theft was not to aid al-Qaeda, but they may have initially believed it was for that purpose; an NDAA detention on that basis would be supported by the text of the NDAA -- and uncontradicted by any public executive policy -- and consistent with the 'secret arrest' description, and not inconsistent with a later determination that that status did not apply accompanied by a decision to pursue normal criminal charges in the civilian justice system."
(I did mention further upthread that the procedural nature of the NDAA detention also practically makes pretextual ascription of association with al-Qaeda or other groups covered within the NDAA a real risk, but that wasn't my primary contention.)
> The NDAA has nothing to do with this story.
I've actually explicitly said that that is most likely the case.
> I don't know why you're so diligently trying to make the case that it does.
I'm not. I only got into the NDAA because of your factually inaccurate description of its requirements in your overzealous attempt to support your equally factually incorrect claim that there is no statutory basis for federal law enforcement to detain U.S. citizens without counsel in "secret arrests".
Had you merely argued that the circumstances here made it appear unlikely that the statutory authority authorizing such detention would either be strictly applicable or invoked by the administration, the character of my response (if I even saw a point to responding) would have been very different.
You just need ambitious, aggressive prosecutors.
Email is insecure regardless of who owns the server or where it's located. The government's own position is that emails in transit are postcards, not letters, and emails at rest are abandoned property, not personal papers and effects.
On the scale of how bad this is, plain old email on a private dedicated server is a 10/10, but plain old email on an @state.gov server would have been at least a 9/10. From an "endangering national security" perspective, we should be equally angry about everyone who used the official State email server for classified information.
It's not just information disclosure. Imagine the lulz to be had from the fact that the Security of State can't distinguish between an email from the President and any idiot who knows how to forge a FROM header.
Also, that time when it turned out that the State Department let the Russians have RCE on its email server for more than a year [1].
[1] http://gizmodo.com/state-dept-just-shut-off-part-of-email-sy...
She's either remarkably inept, or remarkably shady (or both). I'm saying this all with the legitimate desire for her to win, and I'll be voting for her myself, but good lord at least be intellectually honest about what's happening.
* - additional here meaning that I wouldn't claim it to be deliberate to, say, reply to an email containing classified portions and leaving the classified portions in the reply.
I think it's fair to say a bad thing happened (secret documents through insecure channels) because she did a bad thing (setting up an insecure server linked to secure systems). There are multiple failures here and hers, especially considering her leadership[+] position, is one of them. Unfortunately you guys have a choice between two objectively bad candidates.
Good luck.
--
[+] You can't have trickly economics in only one direction.
The "tilt" appears to have been caused by your lack of acknowledgement that the quoted statement was inaccurate. Distinct from this particular instance, "dragonwriter" is asserting that contrary to your statement, the NDAA is legally applicable to a wider class of people than just members of al Qaeda.
Do you agree that one may be subject to the NDAA without being (or being even accused of being) a "member of al Qaeda" and that there are cases where the NDAA can be used as basis to "detain US citizens without counsel"? If so, please correct the tilt by acknowledging the correction. If not, perhaps further explain your position?
And, no, I do not agree with your second paragraph.
Finally: this has nothing to do with the comment I made upthread. Jose Padilla is literally the motivating example for the 2012 NDAA provision!