Meanwhile in Onionland...



  • So, somebody made a Facebook contest that has the usual "to take part in this contest, you have to like this page" clause. No big deal, right? Then why is the whole Internet here in Oni^H^H^HPoland steaming from anger?

    Apparently, the contest is organized by the government, and the first prize is an European Parliament internship. That's already stupid - to make a contest for a government position on Facebook, even as a first stage - but that's not the fun part.

    The fun part is the page you have to "like". Take a guess.

    Yes, it's the page of a currently ruling party. "Hey, mr. Prime Minister, it doesn't matter that our poll results plummet, and we've just pissed of half the Internet - we have 8000 more likes since this morning!"



  • TRWTF is that Tuskistan is still in the EU.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    So, in order to get a job you have to "like" the organization your boss belongs to? Must be nice to have a government where this seems like a scandal.

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    we've just pissed of half the Internet

    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics. Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.



  • @shimon said:

    TRWTF is that Tuskistan is still in the EU.

    What exactly IS Tuskistan, what is the meaning of your comment, and how is it in any way relevant?



  • Presumably Tuskistan is Poland, whose prime minister is Donald Tusk.

    I think the meaning of his comment is that he doesn't think Poland should continue to be in the EU. Probably. Who knows. Hey, a squirrel!



  • I didn't know The Onion was Polish.



  • Wait, Poland has Internet access?



  • @boomzilla said:

    So, in order to get a job you have to "like" the organization your boss belongs to? Must be nice to have a government where this seems like a scandal.

    It's more like "in order to even get a call from the recruiter, you have to click a button which unknowingly makes you friends with the slightly deranged CEO, and you get to hear every day about his prostate problems".

    @Maciejasjmj said:
    we've just pissed of half the Internet

    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics.

    Too bad, it's a great WTF source. But yeah, s/Internet/Polish Internet.

    Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.

    Hint: don't ever, ever utter the words "Polish death camps" around any Pole (or don't talk about pretty much anything WWII-related that doesn't make Poles look like white knights rescuing ungrateful Jews and singlehandedly stopping the German tanks). It's not that you'll be ass-raped, get your dick chopped off, be bludgeoned to death and ass-raped again - it's that you're going to wish you were being ass-raped, getting your dick chopped off, being bludgeoned again and then ass-raped again instead. Just saying.

    Wait, Poland has Internet access?

    Yep. Every morning you send a woman with a bucket to walk 15 miles to the only Internet cafe in the region, where she gets some dirty, muddy and piss-smelling packets.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Hint: don't ever, ever utter the words "Polish death camps" around any Pole (or don't talk about pretty much anything WWII-related that doesn't make Poles look like white knights rescuing ungrateful Jews and singlehandedly stopping the German tanks).

    All things considered, the Poles performed pretty admirably in WWII. You guys did better than the French, and you were at a severe disadvantage--you didn't even have any support from the UK. And before you long you were getting hammered on all sides by the Germans and Soviets, and yet the resistance held out.

    Also, it was Polish intelligence that first broke Enigma and provided extremely valuable intelligence to the UK and US so they could continue code-breaking efforts.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Maciejasjmj said:
    Hint: don't ever, ever utter the words "Polish death camps" around any Pole (or don't talk about pretty much anything WWII-related that doesn't make Poles look like white knights rescuing ungrateful Jews and singlehandedly stopping the German tanks).

    All things considered, the Poles performed pretty admirably in WWII. You guys did better than the French, and you were at a severe disadvantage--you didn't even have any support from the UK. And before you long you were getting hammered on all sides by the Germans and Soviets, and yet the resistance held out.

    Also, it was Polish intelligence that first broke Enigma and provided extremely valuable intelligence to the UK and US so they could continue code-breaking efforts.

    Sure, we did. And we'll be damned if we ever let you forget about it!

    It's not that we didn't do well, or we were idiots who deserved to get their bottoms kicked - it's that today we can't seem to get down from our high horse and admit "Yes, we performed pretty admirably, but we accept that there were assholes who sold Jews and families hiding them for money, and some of our most praised military operations have gone horribly, horribly wrong. All in all - we fought bravely, we held our ground, and our mathematicians are something to be envied, but that doesn't make us the goddamned Christ of Nations.



  • @boomzilla said:

    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics. Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.

    Fucking hell. That's spectacularly ignorant.



  • @nosliwmas said:

    @boomzilla said:
    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics. Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.

    Fucking hell. That's spectacularly ignorant.

    @Some random YT commenter, own translation said:

    WHAT AN IGNORANT YOU FUCKING NIGGER WITH NO KNOWLEDGE FUCK OFF TO YOUR VILLAGE IN KENYA LEARN SOME HISTORY SITTING ON A TREE YET ANOTHER AMERICAN JEW PROVOCATION(Obama is probably not Jewish but a nigger but the Jews run everything behind his back) STOP PROVOKING POLES YOU JEWS ALL THESE POLAK JOKES CAME FROM YOU AND THE STORIES ABOUT POLISH MORONS, PEACE

    Though I agree, that was pretty fucking ignorant.



  • @nosliwmas said:

    @boomzilla said:
    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics. Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.

    Fucking hell. That's spectacularly ignorant.

    Oh, come on. I'm absolutely no fan of Obama, but it was pretty clear he meant "a death camp in Poland" and not "a death camp built by Polacks". Would it have been more sensitive to say "a Nazi-run death camp in Poland"? Yes, but I don't think his slip-up was some sign he truly thinks Poland carried out the Holocaust. I didn't think it was fair when people crucified Bush for shit like this, and I don't like it now.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @nosliwmas said:

    @boomzilla said:
    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics. Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.

    Fucking hell. That's spectacularly ignorant.

    Pretty much par for the course. As Morbs says, no one believes that he actually thought anything other than that they were located in occupied Poland, but for "The World's Greatest Orator," he sure says a lot of stupid things, and things that need clarification, and his biggest weakness is that he hasn't been able to get his message out. Especially for someone so immersed in political correctness, it's amazing how effective he can be at alienating friends and allies by speaking carelessly, even with prepared remarks.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics.

    Too bad, it's a great WTF source. But yeah, s/Internet/Polish Internet

    A bit north of you, the words "Polish parliament" have a very specific meaning.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @nosliwmas said:
    @boomzilla said:
    C'mon, no one cares that much about Polish politics. Maybe if you guys hadn't had those death camps we'd care more.

    Fucking hell. That's spectacularly ignorant.

    Oh, come on. I'm absolutely no fan of Obama, but it was pretty clear he meant "a death camp in Poland" and not "a death camp built by Polacks". Would it have been more sensitive to say "a Nazi-run death camp in Poland"? Yes, but I don't think his slip-up was some sign he truly thinks Poland carried out the Holocaust. I didn't think it was fair when people crucified Bush for shit like this, and I don't like it now.

    I find it hard to understand why he'd think that was a reason for no-one to care about Polish politics if he wasn't imputing some degree of responsibility to the Poles?




  • @spacecadet said:

    Presumably Tuskistan is Poland, whose prime minister is Donald Tusk.
    It's pronounced "Tusk" but spelled Tczywsk.



  • @DaveK said:

    I find it hard to understand why he'd think that was a reason for no-one to care about Polish politics if he wasn't imputing some degree of responsibility to the Poles?

    boomzilla was joking, using it as an opportunity to make reference to the Obama slip-up.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @DaveK said:
    I find it hard to understand why he'd think that was a reason for no-one to care about Polish politics if he wasn't imputing some degree of responsibility to the Poles?

    boomzilla was joking, using it as an opportunity to make reference to the Obama slip-up.

    Sort of. My comment about people caring about Polish politics was with respect to pissing off half the Internet. As a NATO member, Poland is an important ally. Now, you may recall all the talk in 2008 about "smart diplomacy" that Obama and his administration would practice. As to Poland, first he wimped out of some major plans to put NATO missile defenses in Poland, and then he insulted them with a careless speech.

    Now I'm confused, because who does DaveK think was imputing responsibility to the Poles? I guess me, since I was the one who said that and brought up Obama's smart diplomacy. It's probably not worth thinking too hard about all this, especially if Obama and his smart diplomats don't.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Now, you may recall all the talk in 2008 about "smart diplomacy" that Obama and his administration would practice.

    Yeah, that was obviously bullshit.

    @boomzilla said:

    As to Poland, first he wimped out of some major plans to put NATO missile defenses in Poland, and then he insulted them with a careless speech.

    The first is a legitimate criticism. The second is just an honest slip-up (or maybe even less a slip-up and just phrasing that offended the evidently very-touchy Poles.) Poles should be angry with Obama, but not for saying "Polish death camps".

    Seriously, when the fuck did adult men become such sensitive fucking flowers? Time was, you said something like "Polish death camps" and people knew what the fuck you meant. They didn't spend time arguing about hurt feelings, because they had real fucking work to do. And once upon a time, if you threw a hissy fit because somebody said "Polish death camps", you got a reputation as a whiny little asshole and people rightfully ignored you. Guys, do we need a cry session or something? I feel like the levels of sissiness in modern society are reaching epic levels.

    Look, I expect the Left to be full of touch-feely jackasses who spend all day trying to parse every phrase to see whose feelings might be hurt, but when did the Right decide to get in on this wankfest?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Seriously, when the fuck did adult men become such sensitive fucking flowers? Time was, you said something like "Polish death camps" and people knew what the fuck you meant. They didn't spend time arguing about hurt feelings, because they had real fucking work to do. And once upon a time, if you threw a hissy fit because somebody said "Polish death camps", you got a reputation as a whiny little asshole and people rightfully ignored you. Guys, do we need a cry session or something? I feel like the levels of sissiness in modern society are reaching epic levels.

    No, I think this sort of thing is pretty serious, when the head of state goes and insults in his prepared remarks. It shows carelessness and that he doesn't really give a shit. I mean, the POTUS can get away with it, because what is Europe going to do, start defending itself? But it's the sort of thing that gets remembered later on in smaller, behind the scenes negotiation. And that's just with the Poles. Even if you don't give a shit about foreign policy like him, you shouldn't go sending that as a signal for the rest of the world to go ahead and start trying to take advantage of you.



  • @boomzilla said:

    No, I think this sort of thing is pretty serious, when the head of state goes and insults in his prepared remarks. It shows carelessness and that he doesn't really give a shit.

    Insult? Carelessness? FFS, the guy is still the President, he has to do a bunch of tedious fucking speeches all the time, he gets dragged all over the world to basically act as a prop.

    @boomzilla said:

    I mean, the POTUS can get away with it, because what is Europe going to do, start defending itself?

    What, is Poland going to start a war because somebody said "Polish death camps"?

    @boomzilla said:

    But it's the sort of thing that gets remembered later on in smaller, behind the scenes negotiation. And that's just with the Poles. Even if you don't give a shit about foreign policy like him, you shouldn't go sending that as a signal for the rest of the world to go ahead and start trying to take advantage of you.

    What signal? What the hell are you talking about? Seriously, if the Poles are so hyper-sensitive that hearing "Polish death camps" sends them into a tizzy, fuck them. Maybe they can man the fuck up and deal with the real problems in the world and their country, instead of trying to find reasons to be insulted. Giving in to their temper tantrum just encourages more people to act hyper-sensitive and turns the whole world into some weepy vaginafest.

    BTW, I love that the Right has now decided to fully adopt the hysterical, crybaby tactics of the Left, because that is so appealing to me. The NSA did "wiretapping" under Bush and the Bush administration started another program to collect information on foreign nationals, which continued to grow under Obama? "Obama's running a police state! Obama's running a police state!" (Of course, if Romney had won the election it would be "This is a very reasonable program, stop being crybabies, liberals..")

    Bush can't remember the name of some head-of-state from some shithole country: "The President's busy, sometimes he can't keep up on the comings-and-goings of 7 billion people." (A very reasonable response, in my opinion.) Obama says "Polish death camps": "Waaah! He's offending people! Let's care about the feelings of every fucking group in the world who feels like victims (so long as it's a Democrat doing the offending)!!"

    Politics in this country is fucked. It's less about ideals or trying to come up with solutions and more about hating the other guys and doing everything so your "team" can get a point on the other team.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @boomzilla said:
    No, I think this sort of thing is pretty serious, when the head of state goes and insults in his prepared remarks. It shows carelessness and that he doesn't really give a shit.

    Insult? Carelessness? FFS, the guy is still the President, he has to do a bunch of tedious fucking speeches all the time, he gets dragged all over the world to basically act as a prop.

    The guy can't say hello properly without a teleprompter. Someone wrote that line. I'm sure it wasn't him. I hope that the twenty-something overpaid speech writer got the boot, but I can't believe that would happen.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    BTW, I love that the Right has now decided to fully adopt the hysterical, crybaby tactics of the Left, because that is so appealing to me. The NSA did "wiretapping" under Bush and the Bush administration started another program to collect information on foreign nationals, which continued to grow under Obama? "Obama's running a police state! Obama's running a police state!" (Of course, if Romney had won the election it would be "This is a very reasonable program, stop being crybabies, liberals..")

    Yeah, to a certain extent, that's true, but to a certain extent, that's also bullshit. This is different than what (we knew) was going on under Bush. Tu quoque isn't a good defense, even if it's accurate. I know that I for one (as I mentioned earlier) was OK with monitoring stuff going in and out of the country, because that's legit. But that's not what we're talking about any more. I can't say definitively how anyone else thinks about this, but your characterization is absolutely incorrect as far as I'm concerned.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Bush can't remember the name of some head-of-state from some shithole country: "The President's busy, sometimes he can't keep up on the comings-and-goings of 7 billion people." (A very reasonable response, in my opinion.) Obama says "Polish death camps": "Waaah! He's offending people! Let's care about the feelings of every fucking group in the world who feels like victims (so long as it's a Democrat doing the offending)!!"

    I can see that you can't tell the difference between a prepared speech (that's supposed to be honoring a former hero and leader of the country) and off the cuff remarks. I can't think of anything similar that Bush said, but he also didn't go around telling people how brilliant he was, and that he was a World Class orator.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Politics in this country is fucked. It's less about ideals or trying to come up with solutions and more about hating the other guys and doing everything so your "team" can get a point on the other team.

    So when the President does stuff that makes it harder to come up with solutions with our allies, we should...what? We'll just have to agree to disagree over whether this was a real faux pas or not.



  • @boomzilla said:

    The guy can't say hello properly without a teleprompter.

    Welcome to modern, scripted politics. Of course, when you bawl about him making a small mistake like saying "Polish death camps" it just increases the incentive to use a teleprompter. You do realize you are whining at cross-purposes here, right?

    @boomzilla said:

    Someone wrote that line. I'm sure it wasn't him.

    Of course they did and of course it wasn't. When's the last time a President wrote his own speeches? Lincoln?

    @boomzilla said:

    I hope that the twenty-something overpaid speech writer got the boot, but I can't believe that would happen.

    Why? That seems like such a trivial thing to fire someone over. What is with this hysterical style in American politics?

    @boomzilla said:

    Yeah, to a certain extent, that's true, but to a certain extent, that's also bullshit. This is different than what (we knew) was going on under Bush. Tu quoque isn't a good defense, even if it's accurate. I know that I for one (as I mentioned earlier) was OK with monitoring stuff going in and out of the country, because that's legit. But that's not what we're talking about any more. I can't say definitively how anyone else thinks about this, but your characterization is absolutely incorrect as far as I'm concerned.

    So intercepting data as it's going in or out of the country is okay, but retrieving the same data later on is not? Please explain the distinction.

    @boomzilla said:

    I can see that you can't tell the difference between a prepared speech (that's supposed to be honoring a former hero and leader of the country) and off the cuff remarks.

    Bush fumbled. A lot. Still, I don't blame the guy, I think most people would when speaking as President, off-the-cuff or from prepared remarks. See, when I complain about slick politicians I don't then turn around and complain when we get a politician who isn't very well-polished. Because I know what it is I want.

    @boomzilla said:

    ...but he also didn't go around telling people how brilliant he was, and that he was a World Class orator.

    Sure, Obama's a blowhard, but I honestly don't consider that a reason to act like a whiny little bitch over this. Anyone with any sense already knows Obama is a self-fellating, egomaniacal blowhard. But whining about it is only going to make people think you're some kind of blowhard, too.

    @boomzilla said:

    So when the President does stuff that makes it harder to come up with solutions with our allies, we should...what?

    Deal? It's not like the guy punched the Polish ambassador in the face. Or, shit, remember when H. W. puked on the Japanese official? What a dick, right?

    If I was President and I said "Polish death camps" and somebody started whining I'd say "Look, you knew damn well what I meant. If you want to pedantic and nit-pick everything I say, fine, but if you consider this a reason to hold up any kind of necessary cooperation with the US, then clearly that's what you wanted to do all along and you're just using this as a pretense.

    "Yeah, yeah, diplomacy is saying 'Good doggie' in soothing tones while you look for a big rock, but we already have a lot of big rocks and I'm tired of this ridiculous level of formality where people think talking about 'hurt feelings' and 'vagina crybaby hysterics' is a reasonable substitute for getting shit done."


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @boomzilla said:
    The guy can't say hello properly without a teleprompter.

    Welcome to modern, scripted politics. Of course, when you bawl about him making a small mistake like saying "Polish death camps" it just increases the incentive to use a teleprompter. You do realize you are whining at cross-purposes here, right?

    WTF?! THE FUCKING TELEPROMPTER SAID "POLISH DEATH CAMPS."

    @morbiuswilters said:

    So intercepting data as it's going in or out of the country is okay, but retrieving the same data later on is not? Please explain the distinction.

    IT'S NOT THE SAME DATA. THE NEW DATA IS DATA THAT NEVER LEAVES THE COUNTRY. C'mon, man, get off the beach and pay attention...or don't comment or whatever.



  • @boomzilla said:

    WTF?! THE FUCKING TELEPROMPTER SAID "POLISH DEATH CAMPS."

    Yes, I know. What I'm saying is: you criticize Obama for using a teleprompter to give more scripted speeches, which I think is legit. But then you nit-pick every minor phrase to find some way to be offended, which only discourages him (and other politicians) from ever uttering an unscripted word in public.

    @boomzilla said:

    IT'S NOT THE SAME DATA. THE NEW DATA IS DATA THAT NEVER LEAVES THE COUNTRY.

    Really? And what data is that? All I've seen so far are vague references to "billions of phone calls" and data mining email, server logs, Facebook messages, etc. And the public responses from the government have all indicated the agencies attempt to eliminate any communications that are not 51% foreign. So it seems to me like they're now just data mining foreign communications, same as they always have.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    What I'm saying is: you criticize Obama for using a teleprompter to give more scripted speeches, which I think is legit. But then you nit-pick every minor phrase to find some way to be offended, which only discourages him (and other politicians) from ever uttering an unscripted word in public.

    If it hadn't been a prepared speech, I'd give him some leeway for stupid. But actually, if I thought that anything (nonviolent! take note, NSA and Secret Service) I did could prevent even a single word in an Obama speech, then it would be worth it. Seriously, his response to everything is to give a speech. And they're all so terrible.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @boomzilla said:
    IT'S NOT THE SAME DATA. THE NEW DATA IS DATA THAT NEVER LEAVES THE COUNTRY.

    Really? And what data is that? All I've seen so far are vague references to "billions of phone calls" and data mining email, server logs, Facebook messages, etc. And the public responses from the government have all indicated the agencies attempt to eliminate any communications that are not 51% foreign. So it seems to me like they're now just data mining foreign communications, same as they always have.

    What you describe is basically my understanding of what was happening before, which I think is defensible, assuming the foreign part is feasible and actually done. FTFA (emphasis added):
    @grauniad said:


    The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

    The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

    Truly public stuff like Facebook posts not marked private, I have no problem with them collecting, and would laugh at anyone who did.



  • @boomzilla said:

    The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

    Yes, and there are plenty of foreigners in the US. And what they're gathering here are merely the call log details, which I'm iffy on calling private (like the outside of anything you send through the mail.) I don't think domestic law enforcement should be able to collect them indiscriminately, but simply running analysis across the call info to look for patterns that would indicate info about terrorists doesn't seem to be much of a violation of privacy at all. In fact, it's probably more anonymous than a lot of data the government has on you.

    I'm okay with looking for patterns across call logs that include Americans, so long as the data is only being used against foreign nationals (for example, the logs of US citizens could form a baseline for legitimate activity against which suspicious activity is measured.) I don't think it should be used against US citizens, even suspected terrorists. It should never, ever end up in the hands of domestic law enforcement and any call logs of US citizens should be anonymized as much as is reasonably possible.

    And here's the thing: we don't even know if they're doing that much with the data. It's quite possible they're just slurping up all of the logs because the NSA can better classify the entries as including a foreign national better than Verizon can. It seems possible to me most domestic communications of US citizens are being filtered out right away. I mean, do you think Verizon is going to only send over the "suspected terrorists log files"? If Verizon could do that, we wouldn't need the NSA..



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @boomzilla said:
    The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

    Yes, and there are plenty of foreigners in the US. And what they're gathering here are merely the call log details, which I'm iffy on calling private (like the outside of anything you send through the mail.) I don't think domestic law enforcement should be able to collect them indiscriminately, but simply running analysis across the call info to look for patterns that would indicate info about terrorists doesn't seem to be much of a violation of privacy at all. In fact, it's probably more anonymous than a lot of data the government has on you.

    I'm okay with looking for patterns across call logs that include Americans, so long as the data is only being used against foreign nationals (for example, the logs of US citizens could form a baseline for legitimate activity against which suspicious activity is measured.) I don't think it should be used against US citizens, even suspected terrorists. It should never, ever end up in the hands of domestic law enforcement and any call logs of US citizens should be anonymized as much as is reasonably possible.

    And here's the thing: we don't even know if they're doing that much with the data. It's quite possible they're just slurping up all of the logs because the NSA can better classify the entries as including a foreign national better than Verizon can. It seems possible to me most domestic communications of US citizens are being filtered out right away. I mean, do you think Verizon is going to only send over the "suspected terrorists log files"? If Verizon could do that, we wouldn't need the NSA..

    If we're going to play serious Constitutional Lawyer, what really matters is:

    1) Is there an expectation of privacy in any of the communications?
    2) If there is, is Verizon acting as an agent of the state?

    Once we get to #2, warrants and all that due process stuff that you see on Law & Order is required by the 4th amendment.

    So is the fact that dialed the local pizza place 15 times last month private?  No clue.  What about my browsing history?  No clue either.  I read that I was broadcasting my IP address once and I should buy some software to fix that...but I guess the suits will have to figure all this out.



  • @stinerman said:

    1) Is there an expectation of privacy in any of the communications?

    You didn't read the goddamn article, did you? Even if you didn't, if you're going to play Serious Constitutional Lawyer then you should know the courts have ruled that call logs are not private.

    @stinerman said:

    Once we get to #2, warrants and all that due process stuff that you see on Law & Order is required by the 4th amendment.

    If we're going to play SCL then you'd know that Due Process is Fifth and Fourteenth, not Fourth. As for warrants, the entire fucking article was about a FISA warrant issued for Verizon. Now the warrant was fairly open-ended, but that does seem legal under current readings of the statutes. Whether that's permissible by the Constitution has not yet been settled, but the Supreme Court has granted quite a lot of authority to FISA courts in the past, so it would not shock me if they determined it was.

    Also, you don't seem to understand that foreign nationals have significantly reduced rights under the Constitution.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @stinerman said:


    If we're going to play serious Constitutional Lawyer, what really matters is:

    1) Is there an expectation of privacy in any of the communications?
    2) If there is, is Verizon acting as an agent of the state?

    So is the fact that dialed the local pizza place 15 times last month private?  No clue.  What about my browsing history?  No clue either.  I read that I was broadcasting my IP address once and I should buy some software to fix that...but I guess the suits will have to figure all this out.

    I think the scope of this could potentially change this into something new, though. It's one thing to be investigating something in particular and then look into pertinent records. But this is a giant dragnet waiting for an investigation. Is this all reasonable, even if we have limited or no expectation of privacy? The Supreme Court has said sillier things with thinner justification and a straight face.

    Of course, this is just the stuff we know about. When you see all the other bits of incompetence and corruption...



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    You didn't read the goddamn article, did you? Even if you didn't, if you're going to play Serious Constitutional Lawyer then you should know the courts have ruled that call logs are not private.

    Of course I didn't.  What is this slashdot?  I was just there and there wasn't anything interesting going on.  And since I'm playing SCL, not actually one, no I didn't know that.  The More You Know™.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    If we're going to play SCL then you'd know that Due Process is Fifth and Fourteenth, not Fourth.

    Granted.  Good thing this isn't Jeopardy!

    @morbiuswilters said:

    As for warrants, the entire fucking article was about a FISA warrant issued for Verizon.

    I didn't read the article.  And there's the 4th amendment thing I was talking about.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Now the warrant was fairly open-ended, but that does seem legal under current readings of the statutes. Whether that's permissible by the Constitution has not yet been settled, but the Supreme Court has granted quite a lot of authority to FISA courts in the past, so it would not shock me if they determined it was.

    Agreed.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Also, you don't seem to understand that foreign nationals have significantly reduced rights under the Constitution.

    I don't see how you can get that from anything I said.

    In any case if call logs aren't private, Verizon can give them over to the NSA and there isn't jack squat anyone can do about it.  It'd be like them saying that I have blue eyes or that you are missing two fingers.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @stinerman said:
    Once we get to #2, warrants and all that due process stuff that you see on Law & Order is required by the 4th amendment.

    If we're going to play SCL then you'd know that Due Process is Fifth and Fourteenth, not Fourth.

    The warrant is the fourth, but if you didn't get it within the purview of the fifth and fourteenth, it's invalid. Like, maybe if the AG lied to the judge, as he recently said he did.



  • @boomzilla said:

    The warrant is the fourth, but if you didn't get it within the purview of the fifth and fourteenth, it's invalid.

    Relevance to what I said? He said due process was required by the Fourth. I simply corrected him.

    @boomzilla said:

    Like, maybe if the AG lied to the judge, as he recently said he did.

    Link? I don't know what it is you're referring to specifically..


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Like, maybe if the AG lied to the judge, as he recently said he did.

    Link? I don't know what it is you're referring to specifically..

    Here. It came out recently that the DOJ had a warrant to look at James Rosen's (reporter at FoxNews) gmail account. They obtained a warrant by telling a judge they wanted to go after him for working with a State Dept guy who was leaking intelligence assessments of North Korea. Now, Holder tells Congress that they never meant to prosecute Rosen. So he either lied to the Judge or to Congress.

    The incident under investigation happened in 2009, and they've been monitoring the email account ever since.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    @boomzilla said:
    Like, maybe if the AG lied to the judge, as he recently said he did.

    Link? I don't know what it is you're referring to specifically..

    Here. It came out recently that the DOJ had a warrant to look at James Rosen's (reporter at FoxNews) gmail account. They obtained a warrant by telling a judge they wanted to go after him for working with a State Dept guy who was leaking intelligence assessments of North Korea. Now, Holder tells Congress that they never meant to prosecute Rosen. So he either lied to the Judge or to Congress.

    The incident under investigation happened in 2009, and they've been monitoring the email account ever since.

    Admittedly, that seems really questionable, but I'm not sure Holder lied. They said Justice never intended to prosecute the reporter, and since it started in 2009 and they haven't filed charges yet, that seems plausible.


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