"Wyden has also warned about a classified interpretation of Section 702 that he says multiple administrations have relied on and refused to declassify. “When it is eventually declassified,” he said in March, “the American people are going to be stunned that it took so long and that Congress had been debating this authority with insufficient information.”"
Spying on American citizens is a bipartisan point of agreement.
Can please someone explain the concept of a 'classified interpretation' [of law] to me like I'm 5? I know the concept exists, but I don't really understand how it can be in any way justified in any country that's even pretending to be a democracy?
It's not justified and it can never be. Keeping information secret is only justified if releasing it would put a person in serious danger or compromise a police/military operation. And even then it must be balanced against the public interest in transparency, strictly time limited and narrow scoped (no blacking out whole documents).
I don't see how releasing an interpretation of a law could ever compromise law enforcement. Or actually I know how, it's because it would prove the way they do mass surveillance is illegal.
The problem is modern America doesn't see it that way. Any time the government does something evil they just say it's for "national security" and no one questions them. It's like a Winter Soldier password that makes courts go blank and say yes to anything.
Imagine, for example, a case is about someone disclosing the location of nuclear arms to their spouse. Maybe even accidentally. If they are brought up on charges about this, national security doesn't want the fact that a case is about nuclear weapons to be public information. They further don't want it disclosed who was told about them (as the spouse wouldn't be subject to charges). That's basically where a secret interpretation and ruling would ultimately enter. The courts can't disclose what the ruling was nor what the case was even fully about.
Usa has constitution and its government more or less side steps it. Might as well have no constitution. Usa is a jungle for practical intends and purposes compared to europe or any functional democracy. This is the problem with allowing interpretation of law rather than taking law as it is written. Someone somewhere can interpret it in completely twisted way and throw away the spirit of the law.
Really what it is is they had a lawyer say, "We can justify massive spying on citizens via [long long list of arguments and precedents]", the security apparatus would like to keep the veneer of legality that provides and knows if what they were doing was known there would be massive backlash and the law would be changed to make it more clearly illegal so they keep that interpretation secret. Basically going on the logic that they don't have to tell Congress or the Courts how they screwed up the 4th Amendment and it's not their job to fix it.
different countries have different platforms or mechanisms where interpretations of law are discussed, in Belgium for example there are "rondzendbrieven" by which say judges discuss how to collectively misinterpret the law.
from a US perspective, isn't this diametrically opposed to the concept of "void for vagueness"? : the moment the interpretation of ostensibly non-vague law is under discussion by professionals is the moment said law is invalidated.
Any government side stepping law by interpreting law in any different manner than how it is written is breaking that law. In my opinion laws should not be interpreted at all and parliament should make any bug fixes rather than allowing courts or administration to interpret laws in any other way other than how its written down in the law.
> I don't really understand how it can be in any way justified in any country that's even pretending to be a democracy?
You're not misunderstanding. It really is against everything most Americans think their government is allowed to do. To your question, the 'classified' part is what you think it is: secret. 'Interpretation' is the tricky part.
Unfortunately, laws and regulations aren't exactly clear and over time situations change so one important role of the court system is interpreting how, when and whether the words in a law apply in a specific context. Courts at different levels do this all the time as cases with unique situations arise. Sometimes it's as simple as deciding if a horse counts as a vehicle in a state law which says "no vehicles on this type of road." Assuming that ruling survives appeals without being overturned, the judge will have justified the basis and, hopefully, some clear reasoning for why a horse does or doesn't count as a vehicle. That judge's ruling then becomes part of the "precedent" (aka 'body of case law') attached to that law. In effect, such precedents become part of the law since they can clarify if and how the law applies in certain situations.
So whether some action is or isn't against a law can't solely be determined by just reading the law. You have to do some interpretation, which includes looking up any relevant precedents and weighing them. A single prior ruling from one local municipal court has low weight. The main job of the Supreme Court is resolving conflicting precedents set by lower courts, so a SCOTUS ruling has a lot of weight and multiple SCOTUS rulings over time, each successively refining and narrowing (or occasionally reversing) their prior interpretations, carries maximum weight. All of this happens in the open and, in the long run, I think SCOTUS manages to eventually get most things, if not perfect, pretty close to right.
Hence, the answer to "Is this legal" can be a bit tricky because it inevitably depends on context and interpretation. When there aren't handy decades of SCOTUS rulings to refer to, lawyers need to do some research and assess how a court might rule on a situation. That's called "a formal opinion" and it's provided in writing, usually including research and justifications, like references to existing case law, as well as legal reasoning supporting the opinion. Anyone can hire a lawyer to research and assess if X action violates Y law (but if you get sued for relying on the lawyer's opinion, they won't be on the hook - you will). It's called an opinion because that's really all it is.
When a govt agency wants to know if they're allowed to do X under Y law, they ask the justice dept to assess and provide a formal opinion just like any company might ask their corporate counsel to. This is often routine but can be very consequential. Where this can go horribly wrong is when these govt lawyer opinions are classified top secret. For example, we all know torturing prisoners is against U.S. law, so in the 2000s the military and CIA asked the Bush Justice Dept to provide a secret legal opinion on whether certain 'enhanced interrogation' techniques met the legal definition of torture. And they got what they wanted, a written legal opinion that waterboarding isn't torture. The Obama Justice Dept issued a secret legal opinion that droning a teenaged American citizen in Somalia, who posed no exigent threat (but had the wrong Dad), did not meet the legal definition of murder. After it happened and was no longer secret, Senator Rand Paul was the only politician willing to stand on the floor of the senate and say killing a U.S. citizen without any legal due process was first degree murder authorized by a sitting U.S. President.
That's why Senator Ron Wyden is agitated and worried. He's on the Senate intelligence committee, so he gets to see the secret opinions and rulings of the secret intelligence court. And he's saying the U.S. govt is relying on a legal opinion (also from the U.S. govt) which claims something which is obviously, very, VERY wrong is perfectly legal - but he's forbidden from telling us what it is because they made it top secret. For context, Ron Wyden is pretty much a straight-shooter, not known for hyperbole or politically-motivated grandstanding. He's called out both parties in the past when he feels they're seriously wrong. If Ron's basically signaling DANGER, DANGER in interviews, speeches and in writing over and over again - then I'm going to assume whatever it is is way beyond the Snowden revelations and probably in the neighborhood of the worst thing we can possibly imagine.
> Spying on American citizens is a bipartisan point of agreement
Has been. Make it a priority in primaries. It hasn’t been to date—the overlap of privacy concerned Americans and the lazy and nihilistic who reject the political process is almost a union.
To add to this, it's completely dumb to think that any party is necessarily the same over decades. Look around. Most of what you see today is reactionary. Hold on to party views from 10 or 50 years ago, and you won't get elected today. Both parties are in turmoil in terms of public support.
Historical "bipartisan did X" means nothing today. The time is always right now to define what a future party should be. It's a great time to destroy the old and reimagine the new.
I seem to remember that Senator Wyden's public warnings (over a decade ago) that the government was spying on Americans was one reason for President Obama to go on national TV and lie to Americans.
Senator Wyden has a long history of warning the public on surveillance abuses.
That's Wyden as Wyden, not because he is a Democrat. Some of the strongest proponents of these intelligence authorities, and in many cases the literal authors of bills expanding these powers, have been leading Democrats e.g. Feinstein.
There is no credible version of history where Democrats as a party are not enthusiastic supporters of these surveillance powers. They've been actively complicit the entire time.
The cynical (wizened) part of me has to wonder how much of Feinstein's support for surveillance maps back to how many of her constituents see the intelligence community as an addressable market.
To that point, she was on the Committee for Intelligence, so of course she was going to lean the direction of giving Intelligence Community what they wanted. I'd expect someone on Government Oversight to be the one to try to reign it back in, but doubtful any in modern times have the moral fortitude to push back especially under Comer's leadership.
There’s still a sizable portion of the party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the other side.
The Republican Party doesn’t really have an equivalent to a progressive caucus. AOC and Bernie Sanders are highly influential Democratic caucus members on record against state surveillance, with one of those two being a top candidate for the 2028 presidential elections. There is no such dynamic in the Republican Party.
Publish your private messages to friends, family, partner.
These idiots who say "nothing to hide" usually have the most to hide, and lose. And they can't see how something yesterday was legal and today isn't, can still be used against you.
How much comes from this being the minority party in the 119th Congress? Note that when FISA section 702 was extended in April 2024, the House was 147 Democrats in favor, 126 Republicans in favor, 59 Democrats opposed, and 88 Republicans opposed.
When the other guys have control of the government, it is to your party's advantage to deny additional powers to the government. When your guys are in power, vote away to add more power to that. That's just human nature, and has been a staple of political history since the founding of American democracy.
I'm surprised so many people miss this dynamic on so many topics. It's politics 101 to flip flop based on who gets credit, what the news cycle is pushing at that moment, which specific right/topic it applies to etc and then blame the opponent for the same action they themselves took or will take at another point in time. All the while the constituents argue about how their representative or party is somehow superior.
> I'm surprised so many people miss this dynamic on so many topics.
It's because the overwhelming majority of people, including the large majority of 'educated, "informed', Democrat voters', remain even as of 2026 far too tribal and addicted to cheering for the team they've been cheering for.
Another thing is that facing this reality is very scary. It's much easier to sleep at night if you believe that most of it isn't a show, including most of the tribe they've been voting for. The alternative is to admit that most of it is all one big theatre, and they've been scammed for their whole lives. That's another thing, admitting one has been scammed is painful and makes many feel like they're stupid, that they should've known better. Most much rather just not think about it too hard and believe "in the good of people".
In a sense I'm surprised that you're surprised as it's quite basic and well-studied human psychology.
Of course in reality the situation is even worse, as pessimizer aptly points out in a sibling comment.
Exactly right. The inutile minority sees it as their job to make a stink. It's all for show when the vote passes. They are not voting independently, they are rounded up before a vote to ensure success or failure. The vote itself is not what determines a bills passage or not, it's all the strings being pulled before hand; the lobbying, the alliances, the bargaining.
You're being very kind. Many people in Congress know that their base is overwhelmingly against this, so the corrupt ones (the vast majority, especially any with good committee assignments) vote against it only if they're sure there's absolutely no chance of it failing. Whether or not they're currently in power doesn't matter. There's horsetrading even between parties to make sure donor/intelligence-supported bills will pass, but also to give people whose elections might depend on it the opportunity to vote against them.
The last thing that Republicans want is another America First libertarian troublemaker in Congress, and the last thing that Democrats want is some lecturing lefty. It's about business, not beliefs. Also, it's probably increasingly about blackmail.
When this math somehow fails (which happens every once and a while if somebody surprises them), it throws everything into chaos.
> Many people in Congress know that their base is overwhelmingly against this
I have learned that "overwhelmingly against" is a useless concept in politics. The important question is "do they care about it enough to sway their vote?"
There is probably overwhelming support for Ukraine to defend itself in the US (and Europe), but very few people are willing to change their vote based on Ukrainian interests over their own {financial security, culture war, pet issue (abortion, guns, Epstein List, etc)}. If it's not a top-5 issue, it's not relevant to a political campaign.
2A voters and rabid anti-choice voters are polarized enough to actually show up at the capital or threaten their representatives. Extremely few people will dot at for issues lower down the priority list.
It's a dog and pony show though, they take turns being the one to blame. How did the same record look when democrats were in power? I bet most democrats opposed the debate then and most republicans supported it.
As a libertarian, saying that there is a "Libertarian" wing of the Republican party is specious, especially in 2026. The Massie primary showed what happens if you actually go against the fash.
Rand Paul seems to be coasting on his father's reputation of having libertarian principles, while mainly sticking his head up for "culture war" bullshit. His main skill seems to be finely walking this line - show me a libertarian cause he openly supports that bucks a "culture war" narrative.
And I have no idea why you would have even mentioned Hawley. In general every politician talks a good game appealing to some libertarian causes (because most individuals want freedom, duh!), while readily supporting authoritarianism in some way or another.
Give data, please. Without it, this assertion is useless:
> There’s still a sizable portion of the [Democratic] party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the [Republican] side.
No, they voted to not bring the extension bill to the floor. This was a vote on a house rule, which is necessary to affirm before debating and voting on the bill itself.
Wyden is the ranking D member of the intelligence committee (ie would be chair under a D senate). He's not some maverick bucking his party, this is the expression of the party position.
President Obama was the President of the United States when he went on late night TV and assured everyone that the government didn't spy on Americans at all, after Wyden's warnings and the Snowden revelations.
Fun fact, parties, and more importantly the people in them change and evolve over time. They aren't stagnant. For example, we see this with the Republican party which use to hold claim to things like law and order. But times change, and so do parties.
So just because something was a certain way 20 years ago doesn't mean it's still that way today. That would be CRAZY to suggest that.
Unfortunately they have, on the key things that everything else flows from. That doesn't mean that can't change at some point. That would take sizeable evidence that isn't there yet, though.
Republicans have de facto done away with the Constitution, and the rule of law, and are shockingly corrupt - are you saying that democrats are on board with that?
If not, then they're not the same.
We get this in the UK too, Tory party literally steal £Billions using emergency powers in COVID to send money to companies totally unrelated to the contracts made. Then a Labour MP has a complex mortgage arrangement and misses paying a few thousand pounds of tax. And people come in with 'they're all the same'.
It's stunningly moronic to entirely ignore the scale of issues in this way. Well, moronic or intentional deception.
Given that a group of people is not typically of a single mind about the vast array of things for which a position might be expressed [0], the continued presence of Wyden reflects an ambivalence within the group and/or a controlled opposition to cite when the music stops.
You know what I love? We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice. The democrats silently allow the same things under the radar while the republicans do things out in the open. Its the carrot and the stick approach. Populism isn't working. We need to focus on systemic change. Both parties are filled with institutionalists that will do nothing to stop the real abuses because they gain significantly by keeping things they way they are..
> We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice.
You think there have been no advancements in "justice" since 1926? Either you are being hyperbolic, have no knowledge of history or you have a very idiosyncratic definition of justice.
There are people alive today who lived under Jim Crow laws. Is there any argument you would like to make that getting rid of them and enacting the other associated legislation in the 60s was not an advancement?
How can you change anything when the system is built with a fundamental flaw, the constitution never incorporated ethics, it was supposed to be up to the people to vote in ethical people, but that failed. The ones that benefit are corrupt and won’t change it, and good luck on getting enough people voted in power with a conscience to change it and not be swayed by power and money.
Part of the solution is to make bribery illegal so that people are less likely to be swayed by money. It'll be hard to get the people who have been stuffing their pockets with cash in exchange for selling out the American people to agree to limit their ability to do that now. Instead we're going in the opposite direction with the recent Supreme Court ruling making bribery legal as long as you call it a "tip" or "gift" after the public official gave you what you wanted.
Weird you don't feel the same obligation. Recommending more of the same is always safe somehow, even when it continually fails. The ability of certain people to implicitly trust the system that is now headed by a wrestling valet game show host is infinite.
Will you still believe in it when he gets a third term?
> covert both sides argument
As if somebody should be embarrassed about this. Extreme partisans think "both sides are doing it" is a logical fallacy, because of course their side isn't doing whatever you're talking about, if it's bad.
Not sure why they have to provide a solution in order to talk about the issue.
The only solution is to elect better people. I know some people who hoped that Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.
I do disagree with grandparent that nothing has changed; the Supreme Court has shored up the First Amendment rights over the last 50 years and with Chatrie v. United States it looks like they are expanding Fourth Amendment protection.
Now if the Executive and/or Legislative ignore those protections then not much can be done.
Similar to Denver, city votes out Flock, Mayor does a backdoor. Unless they elect someone new and/or bring the Mayor up on procedural charges or something then nothing will change.
> The only solution is to elect better people. I know some people who hoped that Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.
The system is rigged in such a way where that isn't a possibility. Look at the history of our country. ITS NOT WORKING.
The system has to change before we can elect better people. I cant believe I have to point this out with all thats going on... Every election the same arguments and the same responses.
Saying that calling out Trump's corruption while also calling out everyone else's corruption is a both sides argument reads as a my side doesn't have problems argument.
Trump sucks. So does Pelosi, so does Bush and Clinton. What, we need to rank how much they suck?
JFC man, if it's important to you to know how much each of them screwed you, then build a table or something. To me the degree doesn't matter because a little is bad enough.
Obama wasn't always pro-surveillance though. He campaigned on ending the NSAs domestic spying program. Only after he was elected did he suddenly praise the NSA publicly and greatly expand their spying powers.
Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He spoke passionately about the dangers of domestic spying programs and against the Patriot Act. Maybe he was lying the entire time just to be elected, but he was extremely convincing.
Personally, I suspect that once in office he was either shown something that scared him so much that it genuinely made him believe that violating the rights of every American citizen was necessary, or he was strong armed into supporting what they were doing and expanding their abuses. I imagine the NSA had no shortage of dirt on him and his family just as they must have on every politician, CEO, parent, and child in the country.
What? The guy who was killed was actively committing violence and had done so multiple times before. Continuing to evade capture isn’t a get out of jail free card to keep evading the US and keep making bombs.
The guy got more chances than the average US resident who would get shot by the cops for less
I was reading his Wikipedia page and it makes me want to seek out some of his writings to get an idea of the thought process of his followers. I won't be doing that though because I'll probably be put on a watchlist. It's the same fascination I have about traditional cults and really anyone who has extreme/fringe beliefs.
It literally is both sides though. Congress, courts, and executive all love spying, have for decades. Do you have evidence that the Democrats have tried to curtail anything?
Isn't that what all the hype about National Security Letters (and related events from those years) were all about? I never thought any of that went away, the media just stopped reporting on it. We had Lavabit and Snowden showing us how unhinged these things can get.
The 6th Amendment was written to prevent secret courts. The English Star Chamber was frequently secret and you could be put on trial without knowing what evidence/testimony was brought against you. The Star Chamber was also why the 5th Amendment exists.
A secret court is arguably not even a court. It provides no legitimacy whatsoever. It's a bunch of people in a room making a decision. I don't understand why they even bother. Just conduct your dictatorship by issuing decrees over a Zoom meeting.
It's a word game. By calling it a court, legitimacy is implied. Most personalized TV channels are called "social media" even though they're really "personal TV" because the former sounds like it connects you with your friends. The NSA isn't a "surveillance state", it's "intelligence gathering". It's not a war, it's a special military operation. And so on.
> Most personalized TV channels are called "social media" even though they're really "personal TV" because the former sounds like it connects you with your friends.
This is clearly untrue; they're called "social media" because they developed inside other things that were already called "social media".
I came to say the same thing. The secret courts and even the administrative agency courts should not exist. They are a violation of our rights. Any court where the prosecution, judge and jury are all government employees is a gross abuse of authority.
The US doesn't have the most freedom. There's precisely zero evidence that people in the US are the most free, except for the fact that its government tells them they are. But North Korea tells its people that even harder.
I disagree. The US has the 1st and 2nd amendments, which gives us protection from tyranny in the government, and which lets us criticize the government without repercussion. No other country grants its citizens those rights, and you can see the effects of that worldwide, where despite it all, we still have our free speech!
Not exactly a democratic country, but came across these instructions what to do in China when police has detected a VPN in your household, or you have posted something
The process that's described (appear cooperative but deny everything) is the same thing you should do in the US if the police come to your door and accuse you of drug possession. Every country does this violation of freedom, they just use different excuses.
This is an example of a thought-stopping cliche. It is a slogan to prevent the listener from thinking. Or at the least, to divert the listener's thoughts back to a more politically acceptable (to the speaker) rightthink.
> Section 702 only permits the targeting of non-United States persons who are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. United States persons and anyone in the United States may not be targeted under Section 702.
Under the Israel-US agreement for surveillance, that section was circumvented, as the NSA and other agencies are feeding raw unminimized tappings directly to the ELINT/SIGINT agencies and getting relayed back. [1]
This was also true for Five Eyes/EU sharing too, even though with this year's legislation some EU countries have offered Israel a direct access to INT feeds.
Yes, the "fourteen eyes" group. It used to be five (basically all the English speaking countries) but they coerced more European countries to join and now it's fourteen.
You give up some rights for internal stability and in theory better social benefits.
In America, our social contract allows 10 guilty men to go free rather than imprisoning one innocent.
That's the myth anyway. Back in reality America is rapidly marching towards authoritarian capitalism.
Jump outs , black sites, indefinite detention.
>Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
-Hermann Goering
Thus we're always at War.
War on Drugs.
War on Illegal Immigration.
War on Crime.
War on you.
So what we've already deported multiple born in the US citizens. This is war!
Freedom isn't really about whether your country is a democracy or not. Dictatorships can be free (for a while) and democracies can be unfree (Hitler was elected).
The difference is willingness to act on said spying. Luckily, despite the massive surveillance capabilities the U.S. "Intelligence" Community has, they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much. This gives some credence to the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" point of view, but only if you can guarantee you have nothing to hide (which can change drastically depending on who is in power, hence why I don't believe in this - the classic example being that hiding one's religion in and around Germany in the 1930s and early 40s was not seen as important until it was really important).
China and Russia (and to some extent, the UK now) will absolutely act on the spying they do. Or just act and say they had a good reason. China and Russia are dictatorships. One of them has a very competent and hard-working population which succeeds in spite of the dictator, the other is a gas station with nukes that survives solely because of said nukes.
> they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much.
Except they do. The NSA has been handing over intel over a decade ago:
> A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said. [1]
Sure these were criminals, but who knows how many “undesirables” were prosecuted or targeted for some crime anybody commits?
Your position only makes sense if you think that the groups the US gov operates against aren't "regular citizens".
The US gov is acting on intel against its citiczens all the time, regular or not.
Personally, I don't like the right wing groups it's infiltrated, but I still think that is a reasonable example.
For me, more pressingly, there are current investigations going on in Minnesota from the US gov's "Puppetmaster" operation that actively infiltrated and monitored a highly diverse set of anti-ICE groups.
Historically this is nothing new; the US has been infiltrating "anti-government" groups for decades. AIM, the panthers, ELF, ALF, labor unions, MOVE, etc are all easy examples of domestic groups that the US gov has broken at some point or other.
Your position only work if you classify folks such as the Minnesota 15 as "terrorists" or some such. Which, hey, folks like the US Gov try to do. But at that point the point is kind of tautological: if you have "something to hide" then you are a legit target of government sanctioning.
That's not very satisfying to me, but plenty of folks in the US find it to be a just-fine principle.
Well your assumption is that they are not using it; they weren't able to use it all before.. Times are changing; Now they can use and use it a lot.. military Ai infrastructure that is to connected political arm will read and process everything and they can target their apposition... its just matter of time. Absolute power = absolute corruption.
How it is done, everybody knows how.. backdoors in servers, back door in communication equipment, decryption method for of all that goes through fiber in entire world.. Massive data storage to store everything. How is not an issue; every node and communication, hardware and software has a backdoor.
Do they have the right to tap into world communication as well as their own is the issue? They are not challenged by apposing parties and their own population or people have given up.
Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
> Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
Absolutely. AI only needs to bring the keys, and everything else will be waiting for it on a silver platter. And AI is really good at making spare keys.
The debate about reapproval of section 702 is all theater. Does anyone genuinely believe the government would stop surveilling us if the authorization expired?
I guess that depends, do you think that an administration would be willing to prosecute its predecessors for doing it if it were against the law? Maybe you don't because of mutually assured destruction, but lately there's been a lot more appetite for prosecuting people in the other party (with some charges being extremely trumped up, if you'll pardon the pun), so I don't know that this is a given anymore.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that state secret classification of our law enforcement systems should only exist for a year max. We've abused the system to shield evil people from accountability and to hide evil actions by our government, and that has to change.
This capability virtually guarantees that the next generation of Nelson Mandellas, Julian Assanges, <insert national activist of your choice>, etc. gets nipped in the bud long before they become an actual headache to the ruling class. This is why the owners of every country come together to support these technologies, without exception and regardless of political coalition membership.
Going all the way back to lenin these guys were often controlled by third party states anyhow with the goal of destabilizing power structures. Almost like a virus you unleash. That is why lenin was shipped via railcar by germany to the russian empire in 1917 at the height of war. The plan worked and the third rome fell apart shortly thereafter.
He was akin to a molotov cocktail they could toss at any oppressed populace in europe and have non small odds of civil war. It might be more fair to say they controlled him the same way an incendiary bomber controls fire.
That only protects him from non-Senate consequences. He could certainly be ejected from the Senate. Can the Senate try and convict him of breaking national security secrecy laws?
He would most likely not be chosen for the intelligence committee anymore if he did that, it would only be worth before retiring or for something really huge
I had a dream last night that the government had a database that corps sent in "opt-out" info from people. Anytime someone opted out of a surveillance system (e.g. ad tracking, etc...) that info got sent to the government as a signal that the person is sus. They took the "if you have nothing to hide" logic to its full conclusion.
The only good thing is that at least under capitalism (not a system I'm a fan of) this is difficult to do (well as long as the owners of said companies weren't sheep), and like most conspiracies is very hard to enforce, there would be a leakage in a program so broad as this.
But it was a disturbing concept. Merely by signalling you didn't want to be watched made you more watched.
Then, not completely relevant. The US government was not *hiding secret court rulings about how it spies on Americans" since the day the FBI was founded.
Spying on Americans? You could say that, perhaps, but you would have to say it about every law enforcement organization (including the local police) since 1776.
What the actual article is talking about is a massive extension, not covered by the regular "get a warrant in court" mechanism. Saying "just like the FBI" ignores how different this is, and how alien to the Constitution.
The article could have been interesting but by fundamentally misrepresenting the structure of the American federal government they made it impossible to take seriously.
what was always remarkable about surveillance is that given these immense intrusive powers and a total panopticon, this is still the best they can do.
fentanyl epidemic, mass illegal migration and trafficking, networks of terrible abuse, flagrant public corruption, infiltration of schools and academia, conspiracies to demolish the entire western world, and yet even with total information awareness or some variant, these crimes occur in the open.
the scandal isnt that they are spying, its what they have explicitly chooseb to allow and enable.
What enrages me is the longstanding precedent that the government cannot read your letters without a warrant, but apparently electronic messages that are directly analogous are fair game.
> The Trump administration has until November 6 to answer the senators.
How convenient that this is right after the midterm elections. If they maintain control, the republicans can simply decide to ignore this requirement without penalty.
Yep this authoritarian movement is much bigger than the parties. We will see, again and again, how much it matters and the go back to the same old game every election and everyone will forget about how they have been played the first time. Im so sick of this corrupt system.
"Wyden has also warned about a classified interpretation of Section 702 that he says multiple administrations have relied on and refused to declassify. “When it is eventually declassified,” he said in March, “the American people are going to be stunned that it took so long and that Congress had been debating this authority with insufficient information.”"
Spying on American citizens is a bipartisan point of agreement.
Can please someone explain the concept of a 'classified interpretation' [of law] to me like I'm 5? I know the concept exists, but I don't really understand how it can be in any way justified in any country that's even pretending to be a democracy?
It's not justified and it can never be. Keeping information secret is only justified if releasing it would put a person in serious danger or compromise a police/military operation. And even then it must be balanced against the public interest in transparency, strictly time limited and narrow scoped (no blacking out whole documents).
I don't see how releasing an interpretation of a law could ever compromise law enforcement. Or actually I know how, it's because it would prove the way they do mass surveillance is illegal.
The problem is modern America doesn't see it that way. Any time the government does something evil they just say it's for "national security" and no one questions them. It's like a Winter Soldier password that makes courts go blank and say yes to anything.
Once you have secret courts and secret warrants, secret interpretation of the law seems like a natural, if not necessary, progression.
This is basically it.
Imagine, for example, a case is about someone disclosing the location of nuclear arms to their spouse. Maybe even accidentally. If they are brought up on charges about this, national security doesn't want the fact that a case is about nuclear weapons to be public information. They further don't want it disclosed who was told about them (as the spouse wouldn't be subject to charges). That's basically where a secret interpretation and ruling would ultimately enter. The courts can't disclose what the ruling was nor what the case was even fully about.
Usa has constitution and its government more or less side steps it. Might as well have no constitution. Usa is a jungle for practical intends and purposes compared to europe or any functional democracy. This is the problem with allowing interpretation of law rather than taking law as it is written. Someone somewhere can interpret it in completely twisted way and throw away the spirit of the law.
Really what it is is they had a lawyer say, "We can justify massive spying on citizens via [long long list of arguments and precedents]", the security apparatus would like to keep the veneer of legality that provides and knows if what they were doing was known there would be massive backlash and the law would be changed to make it more clearly illegal so they keep that interpretation secret. Basically going on the logic that they don't have to tell Congress or the Courts how they screwed up the 4th Amendment and it's not their job to fix it.
different countries have different platforms or mechanisms where interpretations of law are discussed, in Belgium for example there are "rondzendbrieven" by which say judges discuss how to collectively misinterpret the law.
from a US perspective, isn't this diametrically opposed to the concept of "void for vagueness"? : the moment the interpretation of ostensibly non-vague law is under discussion by professionals is the moment said law is invalidated.
Any government side stepping law by interpreting law in any different manner than how it is written is breaking that law. In my opinion laws should not be interpreted at all and parliament should make any bug fixes rather than allowing courts or administration to interpret laws in any other way other than how its written down in the law.
Not what you’re asking for, but see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_law#Secret_law_in_the_U....
> I don't really understand how it can be in any way justified in any country that's even pretending to be a democracy?
You're not misunderstanding. It really is against everything most Americans think their government is allowed to do. To your question, the 'classified' part is what you think it is: secret. 'Interpretation' is the tricky part.
Unfortunately, laws and regulations aren't exactly clear and over time situations change so one important role of the court system is interpreting how, when and whether the words in a law apply in a specific context. Courts at different levels do this all the time as cases with unique situations arise. Sometimes it's as simple as deciding if a horse counts as a vehicle in a state law which says "no vehicles on this type of road." Assuming that ruling survives appeals without being overturned, the judge will have justified the basis and, hopefully, some clear reasoning for why a horse does or doesn't count as a vehicle. That judge's ruling then becomes part of the "precedent" (aka 'body of case law') attached to that law. In effect, such precedents become part of the law since they can clarify if and how the law applies in certain situations.
So whether some action is or isn't against a law can't solely be determined by just reading the law. You have to do some interpretation, which includes looking up any relevant precedents and weighing them. A single prior ruling from one local municipal court has low weight. The main job of the Supreme Court is resolving conflicting precedents set by lower courts, so a SCOTUS ruling has a lot of weight and multiple SCOTUS rulings over time, each successively refining and narrowing (or occasionally reversing) their prior interpretations, carries maximum weight. All of this happens in the open and, in the long run, I think SCOTUS manages to eventually get most things, if not perfect, pretty close to right.
Hence, the answer to "Is this legal" can be a bit tricky because it inevitably depends on context and interpretation. When there aren't handy decades of SCOTUS rulings to refer to, lawyers need to do some research and assess how a court might rule on a situation. That's called "a formal opinion" and it's provided in writing, usually including research and justifications, like references to existing case law, as well as legal reasoning supporting the opinion. Anyone can hire a lawyer to research and assess if X action violates Y law (but if you get sued for relying on the lawyer's opinion, they won't be on the hook - you will). It's called an opinion because that's really all it is.
When a govt agency wants to know if they're allowed to do X under Y law, they ask the justice dept to assess and provide a formal opinion just like any company might ask their corporate counsel to. This is often routine but can be very consequential. Where this can go horribly wrong is when these govt lawyer opinions are classified top secret. For example, we all know torturing prisoners is against U.S. law, so in the 2000s the military and CIA asked the Bush Justice Dept to provide a secret legal opinion on whether certain 'enhanced interrogation' techniques met the legal definition of torture. And they got what they wanted, a written legal opinion that waterboarding isn't torture. The Obama Justice Dept issued a secret legal opinion that droning a teenaged American citizen in Somalia, who posed no exigent threat (but had the wrong Dad), did not meet the legal definition of murder. After it happened and was no longer secret, Senator Rand Paul was the only politician willing to stand on the floor of the senate and say killing a U.S. citizen without any legal due process was first degree murder authorized by a sitting U.S. President.
That's why Senator Ron Wyden is agitated and worried. He's on the Senate intelligence committee, so he gets to see the secret opinions and rulings of the secret intelligence court. And he's saying the U.S. govt is relying on a legal opinion (also from the U.S. govt) which claims something which is obviously, very, VERY wrong is perfectly legal - but he's forbidden from telling us what it is because they made it top secret. For context, Ron Wyden is pretty much a straight-shooter, not known for hyperbole or politically-motivated grandstanding. He's called out both parties in the past when he feels they're seriously wrong. If Ron's basically signaling DANGER, DANGER in interviews, speeches and in writing over and over again - then I'm going to assume whatever it is is way beyond the Snowden revelations and probably in the neighborhood of the worst thing we can possibly imagine.
It will never get declassified. Never. The people get weaker and more passive with time, the govt gets stronger and reckless and less accountable.
> Spying on American citizens is a bipartisan point of agreement
Has been. Make it a priority in primaries. It hasn’t been to date—the overlap of privacy concerned Americans and the lazy and nihilistic who reject the political process is almost a union.
To add to this, it's completely dumb to think that any party is necessarily the same over decades. Look around. Most of what you see today is reactionary. Hold on to party views from 10 or 50 years ago, and you won't get elected today. Both parties are in turmoil in terms of public support.
Historical "bipartisan did X" means nothing today. The time is always right now to define what a future party should be. It's a great time to destroy the old and reimagine the new.
> President Obama defended the U.S. government's surveillance programs, telling NBC's Jay Leno on Tuesday that: "There is no spying on Americans."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/06/209692380...
I seem to remember that Senator Wyden's public warnings (over a decade ago) that the government was spying on Americans was one reason for President Obama to go on national TV and lie to Americans.
Senator Wyden has a long history of warning the public on surveillance abuses.
> Make it a priority in primaries.
lol what primaries?
To be fair, the one raising this point, Wyden, is a Democrat.
That's Wyden as Wyden, not because he is a Democrat. Some of the strongest proponents of these intelligence authorities, and in many cases the literal authors of bills expanding these powers, have been leading Democrats e.g. Feinstein.
There is no credible version of history where Democrats as a party are not enthusiastic supporters of these surveillance powers. They've been actively complicit the entire time.
The cynical (wizened) part of me has to wonder how much of Feinstein's support for surveillance maps back to how many of her constituents see the intelligence community as an addressable market.
To that point, she was on the Committee for Intelligence, so of course she was going to lean the direction of giving Intelligence Community what they wanted. I'd expect someone on Government Oversight to be the one to try to reign it back in, but doubtful any in modern times have the moral fortitude to push back especially under Comer's leadership.
There’s still a sizable portion of the party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the other side.
The Republican Party doesn’t really have an equivalent to a progressive caucus. AOC and Bernie Sanders are highly influential Democratic caucus members on record against state surveillance, with one of those two being a top candidate for the 2028 presidential elections. There is no such dynamic in the Republican Party.
The ones that speak up get the "if you don't have anything to hide" treatment. I rarely, if ever, hear that line come from the left.
Show me your nudes then.
Publish your bank accounts.
Publish your private messages to friends, family, partner.
These idiots who say "nothing to hide" usually have the most to hide, and lose. And they can't see how something yesterday was legal and today isn't, can still be used against you.
I seem to remember there was some left wing male influencer who posted his dick pics somewhere and said "there, now they can't be leaked"
but my daily dick pics to local politicians is "a custodial matter" apparently
Nothing to hide? Then publish the Epstein files. All of them.
they have a libertarian caucus and a hard right MAGA caucus and those lines get blurred depending on who is winning and who is donating
They do. It's the entire Libertarian wing of the party.
I’ll concede that you are right, the libertarians are there. Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, they’re there.
Let’s look at the voting record.
The majority of house Democrats opposed being up debate on the FISA section 702 extension.
19 house Republicans joined the majority democrats in opposing the extension.
I’d say this still paints a picture of a Democratic Party being far less willing to extend FISA, and actually being majority opposed.
H. Res. 1175, 119th Congress
How much comes from this being the minority party in the 119th Congress? Note that when FISA section 702 was extended in April 2024, the House was 147 Democrats in favor, 126 Republicans in favor, 59 Democrats opposed, and 88 Republicans opposed.
When the other guys have control of the government, it is to your party's advantage to deny additional powers to the government. When your guys are in power, vote away to add more power to that. That's just human nature, and has been a staple of political history since the founding of American democracy.
I'm surprised so many people miss this dynamic on so many topics. It's politics 101 to flip flop based on who gets credit, what the news cycle is pushing at that moment, which specific right/topic it applies to etc and then blame the opponent for the same action they themselves took or will take at another point in time. All the while the constituents argue about how their representative or party is somehow superior.
> I'm surprised so many people miss this dynamic on so many topics.
It's because the overwhelming majority of people, including the large majority of 'educated, "informed', Democrat voters', remain even as of 2026 far too tribal and addicted to cheering for the team they've been cheering for.
Another thing is that facing this reality is very scary. It's much easier to sleep at night if you believe that most of it isn't a show, including most of the tribe they've been voting for. The alternative is to admit that most of it is all one big theatre, and they've been scammed for their whole lives. That's another thing, admitting one has been scammed is painful and makes many feel like they're stupid, that they should've known better. Most much rather just not think about it too hard and believe "in the good of people".
In a sense I'm surprised that you're surprised as it's quite basic and well-studied human psychology.
Of course in reality the situation is even worse, as pessimizer aptly points out in a sibling comment.
Exactly right. The inutile minority sees it as their job to make a stink. It's all for show when the vote passes. They are not voting independently, they are rounded up before a vote to ensure success or failure. The vote itself is not what determines a bills passage or not, it's all the strings being pulled before hand; the lobbying, the alliances, the bargaining.
You're being very kind. Many people in Congress know that their base is overwhelmingly against this, so the corrupt ones (the vast majority, especially any with good committee assignments) vote against it only if they're sure there's absolutely no chance of it failing. Whether or not they're currently in power doesn't matter. There's horsetrading even between parties to make sure donor/intelligence-supported bills will pass, but also to give people whose elections might depend on it the opportunity to vote against them.
The last thing that Republicans want is another America First libertarian troublemaker in Congress, and the last thing that Democrats want is some lecturing lefty. It's about business, not beliefs. Also, it's probably increasingly about blackmail.
When this math somehow fails (which happens every once and a while if somebody surprises them), it throws everything into chaos.
> Many people in Congress know that their base is overwhelmingly against this
I have learned that "overwhelmingly against" is a useless concept in politics. The important question is "do they care about it enough to sway their vote?"
There is probably overwhelming support for Ukraine to defend itself in the US (and Europe), but very few people are willing to change their vote based on Ukrainian interests over their own {financial security, culture war, pet issue (abortion, guns, Epstein List, etc)}. If it's not a top-5 issue, it's not relevant to a political campaign.
2A voters and rabid anti-choice voters are polarized enough to actually show up at the capital or threaten their representatives. Extremely few people will dot at for issues lower down the priority list.
It's a dog and pony show though, they take turns being the one to blame. How did the same record look when democrats were in power? I bet most democrats opposed the debate then and most republicans supported it.
As a libertarian, saying that there is a "Libertarian" wing of the Republican party is specious, especially in 2026. The Massie primary showed what happens if you actually go against the fash.
Rand Paul seems to be coasting on his father's reputation of having libertarian principles, while mainly sticking his head up for "culture war" bullshit. His main skill seems to be finely walking this line - show me a libertarian cause he openly supports that bucks a "culture war" narrative.
And I have no idea why you would have even mentioned Hawley. In general every politician talks a good game appealing to some libertarian causes (because most individuals want freedom, duh!), while readily supporting authoritarianism in some way or another.
(Props to Wyden on this issue, though)
"entire wing" makes it sound very meaningful for a group that has had no effective power for the last 10+ years.
Give data, please. Without it, this assertion is useless:
> There’s still a sizable portion of the [Democratic] party as of right now that is against surveillance powers in a way that doesn’t really exist on the [Republican] side.
H. Res. 1175, 119th Congress
Majority of Democrats voted not to extend FISA, only a small handful of Republicans joined them to block debate on the bill.
And what was the vote on the same issue when democrats were in power?
No, they voted to not bring the extension bill to the floor. This was a vote on a house rule, which is necessary to affirm before debating and voting on the bill itself.
Wyden is an aberration. He (unfortunately) does not represent the party on these issues.
The one raising the point. Apparently standing alone amongst otherwise bipartisan support of spying on Americans.
Wyden is the ranking D member of the intelligence committee (ie would be chair under a D senate). He's not some maverick bucking his party, this is the expression of the party position.
President Obama was the President of the United States when he went on late night TV and assured everyone that the government didn't spy on Americans at all, after Wyden's warnings and the Snowden revelations.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/06/209692380...
If that were the case, they'd have done something about it before. This doesn't appear to be new.
Hopefully the party learned something from Biden’s four years.
Fun fact, parties, and more importantly the people in them change and evolve over time. They aren't stagnant. For example, we see this with the Republican party which use to hold claim to things like law and order. But times change, and so do parties.
So just because something was a certain way 20 years ago doesn't mean it's still that way today. That would be CRAZY to suggest that.
They have "evolved" to the point there is no difference between them anymore
Yes, obviously they agree on everything.
Taking AIPAC money for instance.
Unfortunately they have, on the key things that everything else flows from. That doesn't mean that can't change at some point. That would take sizeable evidence that isn't there yet, though.
Republicans have de facto done away with the Constitution, and the rule of law, and are shockingly corrupt - are you saying that democrats are on board with that?
If not, then they're not the same.
We get this in the UK too, Tory party literally steal £Billions using emergency powers in COVID to send money to companies totally unrelated to the contracts made. Then a Labour MP has a complex mortgage arrangement and misses paying a few thousand pounds of tax. And people come in with 'they're all the same'.
It's stunningly moronic to entirely ignore the scale of issues in this way. Well, moronic or intentional deception.
I wish this were true. My take after watching him for years is that he's uniquely equipped to evaluate these issues in a way his peers are not.
Given that a group of people is not typically of a single mind about the vast array of things for which a position might be expressed [0], the continued presence of Wyden reflects an ambivalence within the group and/or a controlled opposition to cite when the music stops.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice
In American politics it seems like all the good ones side democrat, but it's few enough that most of the democrat party still isn't good ones.
I love the both siding argument springing up right before election day.
You know what I love? We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice. The democrats silently allow the same things under the radar while the republicans do things out in the open. Its the carrot and the stick approach. Populism isn't working. We need to focus on systemic change. Both parties are filled with institutionalists that will do nothing to stop the real abuses because they gain significantly by keeping things they way they are..
> We have spent over 100 years going back and forth on party politics. It has done nothing to move the bar on justice.
You think there have been no advancements in "justice" since 1926? Either you are being hyperbolic, have no knowledge of history or you have a very idiosyncratic definition of justice.
People who see the world in black and white are incapable of telling the difference between a shade of dark gray and light gray.
What are the advancements?
for starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement but if you have no knowledge of American history not sure a hn thread is right place to start
There are people alive today who lived under Jim Crow laws. Is there any argument you would like to make that getting rid of them and enacting the other associated legislation in the 60s was not an advancement?
survivable executions?
How can you change anything when the system is built with a fundamental flaw, the constitution never incorporated ethics, it was supposed to be up to the people to vote in ethical people, but that failed. The ones that benefit are corrupt and won’t change it, and good luck on getting enough people voted in power with a conscience to change it and not be swayed by power and money.
Part of the solution is to make bribery illegal so that people are less likely to be swayed by money. It'll be hard to get the people who have been stuffing their pockets with cash in exchange for selling out the American people to agree to limit their ability to do that now. Instead we're going in the opposite direction with the recent Supreme Court ruling making bribery legal as long as you call it a "tip" or "gift" after the public official gave you what you wanted.
State an actual solution, you're just making a covert both sides argument under the guise of a longer rant.
Weird you don't feel the same obligation. Recommending more of the same is always safe somehow, even when it continually fails. The ability of certain people to implicitly trust the system that is now headed by a wrestling valet game show host is infinite.
Will you still believe in it when he gets a third term?
> covert both sides argument
As if somebody should be embarrassed about this. Extreme partisans think "both sides are doing it" is a logical fallacy, because of course their side isn't doing whatever you're talking about, if it's bad.
Not sure why they have to provide a solution in order to talk about the issue.
The only solution is to elect better people. I know some people who hoped that Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.
I do disagree with grandparent that nothing has changed; the Supreme Court has shored up the First Amendment rights over the last 50 years and with Chatrie v. United States it looks like they are expanding Fourth Amendment protection.
Now if the Executive and/or Legislative ignore those protections then not much can be done.
Similar to Denver, city votes out Flock, Mayor does a backdoor. Unless they elect someone new and/or bring the Mayor up on procedural charges or something then nothing will change.
>Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.
Trump is not more of the same. He actually changed my stance on people being evil and beyond redemption.
> The only solution is to elect better people. I know some people who hoped that Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.
The system is rigged in such a way where that isn't a possibility. Look at the history of our country. ITS NOT WORKING.
The system has to change before we can elect better people. I cant believe I have to point this out with all thats going on... Every election the same arguments and the same responses.
> I know some people who hoped that Trump would be that in 2016 but he is just more of the same.
Trump's corruption is on such a different scale that calling him "more of the same" reads as a both sides argument.
Saying that calling out Trump's corruption while also calling out everyone else's corruption is a both sides argument reads as a my side doesn't have problems argument.
Trump sucks. So does Pelosi, so does Bush and Clinton. What, we need to rank how much they suck?
JFC man, if it's important to you to know how much each of them screwed you, then build a table or something. To me the degree doesn't matter because a little is bad enough.
It is both sides. Republicans accelerate it, but Democrats don't shut it down when they have the chance. Obama and Biden had 12 years to fix it.
Obama certainly was for this; he didn't shy away from extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen in a foreign land, executed by our military.
It is both sides. Wyden is a (welcome) aberration (on this topic).
Obama wasn't always pro-surveillance though. He campaigned on ending the NSAs domestic spying program. Only after he was elected did he suddenly praise the NSA publicly and greatly expand their spying powers.
Sounds more like he was pro-surveillance but knew how unpopular it was.
Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He spoke passionately about the dangers of domestic spying programs and against the Patriot Act. Maybe he was lying the entire time just to be elected, but he was extremely convincing.
Personally, I suspect that once in office he was either shown something that scared him so much that it genuinely made him believe that violating the rights of every American citizen was necessary, or he was strong armed into supporting what they were doing and expanding their abuses. I imagine the NSA had no shortage of dirt on him and his family just as they must have on every politician, CEO, parent, and child in the country.
Yes, just another lying or compromised politician.
Yep, Obama is a mass murderer just like the rest of them. People tend to not care until the oppression comes home and is in plain view.
What? The guy who was killed was actively committing violence and had done so multiple times before. Continuing to evade capture isn’t a get out of jail free card to keep evading the US and keep making bombs.
The guy got more chances than the average US resident who would get shot by the cops for less
The constitution is clear: he had a right to a trial by jury.
The guy who was killed was a propagandist. Also his children were killed.
> The guy got more chances than the average US resident who would get shot by the cops for less
Using violations of rights to justify more violations of rights. This makes a lot of sense!
I was reading his Wikipedia page and it makes me want to seek out some of his writings to get an idea of the thought process of his followers. I won't be doing that though because I'll probably be put on a watchlist. It's the same fascination I have about traditional cults and really anyone who has extreme/fringe beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
It literally is both sides though. Congress, courts, and executive all love spying, have for decades. Do you have evidence that the Democrats have tried to curtail anything?
It's all one side as far as I'm concerned and always has been.
Spying on American citizens and going together on Lolita Express to Epstein island...
Nah, mostly republicans
Isn't that what all the hype about National Security Letters (and related events from those years) were all about? I never thought any of that went away, the media just stopped reporting on it. We had Lavabit and Snowden showing us how unhinged these things can get.
Secret courts are anathema to democracy and need to be abolished.
The 6th Amendment was written to prevent secret courts. The English Star Chamber was frequently secret and you could be put on trial without knowing what evidence/testimony was brought against you. The Star Chamber was also why the 5th Amendment exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights
A secret court is arguably not even a court. It provides no legitimacy whatsoever. It's a bunch of people in a room making a decision. I don't understand why they even bother. Just conduct your dictatorship by issuing decrees over a Zoom meeting.
It's a word game. By calling it a court, legitimacy is implied. Most personalized TV channels are called "social media" even though they're really "personal TV" because the former sounds like it connects you with your friends. The NSA isn't a "surveillance state", it's "intelligence gathering". It's not a war, it's a special military operation. And so on.
> Most personalized TV channels are called "social media" even though they're really "personal TV" because the former sounds like it connects you with your friends.
This is clearly untrue; they're called "social media" because they developed inside other things that were already called "social media".
I came to say the same thing. The secret courts and even the administrative agency courts should not exist. They are a violation of our rights. Any court where the prosecution, judge and jury are all government employees is a gross abuse of authority.
Democracy has been deprecated in the United States, and will be removed in a future 'election'.
I will always be baffled by the dichotomy of "the US has the most freedom" and "no democratic country spies more on its citizens".
The US doesn't have the most freedom. There's precisely zero evidence that people in the US are the most free, except for the fact that its government tells them they are. But North Korea tells its people that even harder.
I disagree. The US has the 1st and 2nd amendments, which gives us protection from tyranny in the government, and which lets us criticize the government without repercussion. No other country grants its citizens those rights, and you can see the effects of that worldwide, where despite it all, we still have our free speech!
Can you name a single western democracy where the citizens are prohibited from criticizing their government?
Not exactly a democratic country, but came across these instructions what to do in China when police has detected a VPN in your household, or you have posted something
https://x.com/hongguabg/status/2114213232454082869?s=20
We have some flexibility with freedom left, and let’s keep it that way.
If the US state regime would benefit from blocking VPNs, they'd do it in a heartbeat. They just don't need to yet.
That link you just posted is blocked for me because I don't have an X account. Here's an unblocker redirector - suspiciously like a HTTP VPN: https://xxcancel.com/hongguabg/status/2114213232454082869?s=...
The process that's described (appear cooperative but deny everything) is the same thing you should do in the US if the police come to your door and accuse you of drug possession. Every country does this violation of freedom, they just use different excuses.
> "the US has the most freedom"
This is an example of a thought-stopping cliche. It is a slogan to prevent the listener from thinking. Or at the least, to divert the listener's thoughts back to a more politically acceptable (to the speaker) rightthink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rightthink
Why are you baffled?
FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Section 702
> Section 702 only permits the targeting of non-United States persons who are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. United States persons and anyone in the United States may not be targeted under Section 702.
https://www.intel.gov/foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act/...
Under the Israel-US agreement for surveillance, that section was circumvented, as the NSA and other agencies are feeding raw unminimized tappings directly to the ELINT/SIGINT agencies and getting relayed back. [1]
This was also true for Five Eyes/EU sharing too, even though with this year's legislation some EU countries have offered Israel a direct access to INT feeds.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/sep/11/ns...
Wow. Does the US have this type of agreement with any other country?
Yes, the "fourteen eyes" group. It used to be five (basically all the English speaking countries) but they coerced more European countries to join and now it's fourteen.
The US _shares_ intel with the other Eyes, and within these there's layers of cooperation, with the US<->UK on top.
But this agreement concerns raw, non minimized, SIGINT (eg. direct tapping into feeds/traffic) mainly from US -> Israel.
i would give the article a quick (re-?)skim for context of V__'s comment, as the article repeatedly talks about spying on american citizens
I bet you that China, Russia and the UK rank higher
>China, Russia
both notorious for bragging about being the most free country on earth
Are China and Russia democracies?
In China the social contract is different.
You give up some rights for internal stability and in theory better social benefits.
In America, our social contract allows 10 guilty men to go free rather than imprisoning one innocent.
That's the myth anyway. Back in reality America is rapidly marching towards authoritarian capitalism.
Jump outs , black sites, indefinite detention.
>Naturally the common people don't want war . . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
-Hermann Goering
Thus we're always at War. War on Drugs. War on Illegal Immigration. War on Crime. War on you.
So what we've already deported multiple born in the US citizens. This is war!
>In America, our social contract allows 10 guilty men to go free rather than imprisoning one innocent.
For criminal matters, sure.
In civil and administrative matters it's the opposite with the decimal moved to the left a couple times.
> So what we've already deported multiple born in the US citizens
What are their names?
Full deportation
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/23/texas-united-states-...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/children-who-are-u-s-c...
Indefinite detention for being Hispanic despite being born in America.
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/deportation-effort-ma...
Freedom isn't really about whether your country is a democracy or not. Dictatorships can be free (for a while) and democracies can be unfree (Hitler was elected).
passport wise, probably true or close to true.
nah the UK spies pretty hard on its citizens.
CSIS and ASIS in Canada and Australia have far more powers than anything the CIA could ever do.
I owned more guns, got paid more, and had more vacation while working for a US company than I ever did in the Oz or Glorious Canukistan
The difference is willingness to act on said spying. Luckily, despite the massive surveillance capabilities the U.S. "Intelligence" Community has, they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much. This gives some credence to the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" point of view, but only if you can guarantee you have nothing to hide (which can change drastically depending on who is in power, hence why I don't believe in this - the classic example being that hiding one's religion in and around Germany in the 1930s and early 40s was not seen as important until it was really important).
China and Russia (and to some extent, the UK now) will absolutely act on the spying they do. Or just act and say they had a good reason. China and Russia are dictatorships. One of them has a very competent and hard-working population which succeeds in spite of the dictator, the other is a gas station with nukes that survives solely because of said nukes.
> they don't seem to really mess with regular citizens all that much.
Except they do. The NSA has been handing over intel over a decade ago:
> A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said. [1]
Sure these were criminals, but who knows how many “undesirables” were prosecuted or targeted for some crime anybody commits?
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/us-drug-agency-g...
Your position only makes sense if you think that the groups the US gov operates against aren't "regular citizens".
The US gov is acting on intel against its citiczens all the time, regular or not.
Personally, I don't like the right wing groups it's infiltrated, but I still think that is a reasonable example.
For me, more pressingly, there are current investigations going on in Minnesota from the US gov's "Puppetmaster" operation that actively infiltrated and monitored a highly diverse set of anti-ICE groups.
Historically this is nothing new; the US has been infiltrating "anti-government" groups for decades. AIM, the panthers, ELF, ALF, labor unions, MOVE, etc are all easy examples of domestic groups that the US gov has broken at some point or other.
Your position only work if you classify folks such as the Minnesota 15 as "terrorists" or some such. Which, hey, folks like the US Gov try to do. But at that point the point is kind of tautological: if you have "something to hide" then you are a legit target of government sanctioning.
That's not very satisfying to me, but plenty of folks in the US find it to be a just-fine principle.
Well your assumption is that they are not using it; they weren't able to use it all before.. Times are changing; Now they can use and use it a lot.. military Ai infrastructure that is to connected political arm will read and process everything and they can target their apposition... its just matter of time. Absolute power = absolute corruption.
How it is done, everybody knows how.. backdoors in servers, back door in communication equipment, decryption method for of all that goes through fiber in entire world.. Massive data storage to store everything. How is not an issue; every node and communication, hardware and software has a backdoor.
Do they have the right to tap into world communication as well as their own is the issue? They are not challenged by apposing parties and their own population or people have given up.
Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
> Perhaps there will be a disaster is waiting with all these backdoors and Ai supremacy.
Absolutely. AI only needs to bring the keys, and everything else will be waiting for it on a silver platter. And AI is really good at making spare keys.
The debate about reapproval of section 702 is all theater. Does anyone genuinely believe the government would stop surveilling us if the authorization expired?
I guess that depends, do you think that an administration would be willing to prosecute its predecessors for doing it if it were against the law? Maybe you don't because of mutually assured destruction, but lately there's been a lot more appetite for prosecuting people in the other party (with some charges being extremely trumped up, if you'll pardon the pun), so I don't know that this is a given anymore.
Even if it were perfectly illegal plain as day, they’d launder the intelligence gathering through a partner intelligence org like mossad.
This kind of thing will never stop. And those who control it have all the leverage and power.
Perhaps all the spying data should just be publicly accessible and easily accessible for all to use and abuse.
Would democratizing it all so there is never an expectation of privacy from the public vs a select few in power be better in the long run?
Yes, if it truly all data, available to all.
No.
They don't want the public to see the big green "APPROVED" rubber stamp that the FISC uses.
Secret methods are an unavoidable necessity of governance. Secret laws an legal decisions are the hallmark of a failed polity.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that state secret classification of our law enforcement systems should only exist for a year max. We've abused the system to shield evil people from accountability and to hide evil actions by our government, and that has to change.
This capability virtually guarantees that the next generation of Nelson Mandellas, Julian Assanges, <insert national activist of your choice>, etc. gets nipped in the bud long before they become an actual headache to the ruling class. This is why the owners of every country come together to support these technologies, without exception and regardless of political coalition membership.
Going all the way back to lenin these guys were often controlled by third party states anyhow with the goal of destabilizing power structures. Almost like a virus you unleash. That is why lenin was shipped via railcar by germany to the russian empire in 1917 at the height of war. The plan worked and the third rome fell apart shortly thereafter.
Lenin was supported by Germany, but I don't think anyone credible would say he wa controlled by Germany.
He was akin to a molotov cocktail they could toss at any oppressed populace in europe and have non small odds of civil war. It might be more fair to say they controlled him the same way an incendiary bomber controls fire.
They waited until there was a civil war in Russia to send him back.
he accomplished their aims, however, and that is enough.
They are only doing it for the children.
He should go further and describe or read these secret rulings on the Senate floor, where the speech and debate clause protects him.
That only protects him from non-Senate consequences. He could certainly be ejected from the Senate. Can the Senate try and convict him of breaking national security secrecy laws?
He would most likely not be chosen for the intelligence committee anymore if he did that, it would only be worth before retiring or for something really huge
So grateful to have Wyden in my corner. Especially for the last decade or so it sparks joy to fill his bubble in on the ballot.
He's my favorite democrat
I had a dream last night that the government had a database that corps sent in "opt-out" info from people. Anytime someone opted out of a surveillance system (e.g. ad tracking, etc...) that info got sent to the government as a signal that the person is sus. They took the "if you have nothing to hide" logic to its full conclusion.
The only good thing is that at least under capitalism (not a system I'm a fan of) this is difficult to do (well as long as the owners of said companies weren't sheep), and like most conspiracies is very hard to enforce, there would be a leakage in a program so broad as this.
But it was a disturbing concept. Merely by signalling you didn't want to be watched made you more watched.
> there would be a leakage in a program so broad as this
It took an insider with one of the highest clearances you can get to break the news about these kinds of wiretapping deals.
Apple, Google, and other insiders were very quiet about those back room deals. You can bet they never stopped and only expanded too.
This headline has been relevant since 2001.
I would argue it's been relevant since July 26, 1908
Could you be a bit more specific about the relevance of that date?
Searching the date yields this link: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-26/fbi-foun...
The FBI was founded.
Then, not completely relevant. The US government was not *hiding secret court rulings about how it spies on Americans" since the day the FBI was founded.
Spying on Americans? You could say that, perhaps, but you would have to say it about every law enforcement organization (including the local police) since 1776.
What the actual article is talking about is a massive extension, not covered by the regular "get a warrant in court" mechanism. Saying "just like the FBI" ignores how different this is, and how alien to the Constitution.
To clarify, I'm not promoting the previous comment, I'm just clarifying what the date was
A ruling belongs to the judicial branch.
The article could have been interesting but by fundamentally misrepresenting the structure of the American federal government they made it impossible to take seriously.
what was always remarkable about surveillance is that given these immense intrusive powers and a total panopticon, this is still the best they can do.
fentanyl epidemic, mass illegal migration and trafficking, networks of terrible abuse, flagrant public corruption, infiltration of schools and academia, conspiracies to demolish the entire western world, and yet even with total information awareness or some variant, these crimes occur in the open.
the scandal isnt that they are spying, its what they have explicitly chooseb to allow and enable.
What enrages me is the longstanding precedent that the government cannot read your letters without a warrant, but apparently electronic messages that are directly analogous are fair game.
> The Trump administration has until November 6 to answer the senators.
How convenient that this is right after the midterm elections. If they maintain control, the republicans can simply decide to ignore this requirement without penalty.
Remind me in February to look back at how much the Democrats have done about it.
If it's simply not blocking this answer, then it's a win. Doing nothing is better than actively breaking the law.
Yep this authoritarian movement is much bigger than the parties. We will see, again and again, how much it matters and the go back to the same old game every election and everyone will forget about how they have been played the first time. Im so sick of this corrupt system.