Yahoo wins to declassify it's PRISM records in FISA court!

[The2ndAmendment]

Yahoo claimed they were ardnetly fighting the PRISM abolition of our 4th Amendment in the secretive FISA courts.

Now they've managed to force the government to declassify their proceedings.

Fact: FISA has only denied 11 of 34,000 requests to conduct massive intelligence gathering. It's a ******* rubber stamp phony court.

http://www.dailydot.com/news/yahoo-prism-court-win-fisa-declassified/

http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/15/yahoo-declassify-prism-fisa-documents/

 

[waltky]

Judge orders stop to NSA bulk phone surveillance...

Federal judge orders immediate end to NSA bulk phone spying
Monday 9th November, 2015 | WASHINGTON - A federal judge in the United States has decided against the controversial surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA) because it "likely violates the constitution".

The judge, Richard Leon, had earlier ruled in the case in 2013, but the government filed an appeal. The case subsequently came back to the Washington D.C. District Court. Leon said he regretted not issuing an injunction because "the loss of constitutional freedoms for even one day is a significant harm". "This court simply cannot, and will not, allow the government to trump the Constitution merely because it suits the exigencies of the moment," Leon wrote in his 43-page decision. "With the government's authority to operate the bulk telephony metadata program quickly coming to an end, this case is perhaps the last chapter in the judiciary's evaluation of this particular program's compatibility with the Constitution," the judge wrote. "It will not, however, be the last chapter in the ongoing struggle to balance privacy rights and national security interests under our constitution in an age of evolving technological wizardry."

The NSA program is scheduled to end on Nov 29. Even then the decision, though merely symbolic, has been hailed because it sets a legal precedent. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed the controversial electronic surveillance program of millions of Americans and people, including foreign leaders, celebrated the ruling on Twitter. He called the decision "historic." The NSA has been collecting Americans' phone records in bulk from telephone companies. It uses the data to analyze social links between people to hunt for hidden associates of terrorism suspects.

President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act on June 2, which allowed the bulk collection program to last for another 180 days. Under the new law, the metadata instead will stay with the telecoms, and won't automatically be forwarded to the NSA in bulk. The NSA may still access the metadata with the secret FISA Court's approval if the government maintains there is a reasonable suspicion that the phone data of a target is relevant to a terror investigation and at least one party to the call is overseas.

Federal judge orders immediate end to NSA bulk phone spying

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US intelligence plane alleged to have violated Venezuela air space
Sunday 8th November, 2015 - A US Coast Guard intelligence plane violated Venezuela airspace, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said Sunday, alleging that more surveillance jets circulated close to the skies of the South American nation.

The incident took place in the south of the country on Friday, the minister said. "Forty-eight hours ago, an intelligence plane for the US Coast Guard took off from the air base in Curacao," Padrino said in a televised broadcast on Sunday. Padrino, dressed in military fatigues, said the trespassing plane was a Dash-8 that made an unusual flight with its electronic surveillance equipment to come close to Venezuela's "area of influence" without offering any specifics.

The United States is said to have drug interdiction planes based in Curacao, an island country in the southern Caribbean Sea, approximately 65 km north of the Venezuelan coast. "It is quite unusual for this type of aircraft to approach our area. The most serious part is that this plane, a Dash-8 ... violated air space, our air space," he said, adding the aircraft was close the western Los Monjes archipelago on the Caribbean coast. The American embassy in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and the US Coast Guard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Padrino said that other planes with the ability to collect information were also close to Venezuela and that a US aircraft carrier would be "very close" to the Latin American country on the day of its parliamentary elections in December. "This deserves our attention," he stressed, "Taking into account the precedents that exist, especially in the year 2002." He was referring to the US-endorsed coup that briefly deposed late leftist leader Hugo Chavez. He said that Venezuelan foreign ministry has been informed about the incident to escalate the incident at a proper diplomatic forum.

Relations between Venezuela and the United States have been strained since the late 1990s, when late Hugo Chavez was elected Venezuela's president. Most recently, Washington imposed sanctions on Venezuela's several senior officials, following allegations that anti-government protesters have been abused. Venezuela's leftist administration frequently accuses the US, its ideological foe, of plotting to overthrow the government and lay its hands on the OPEC country's oil wealth.

US intelligence plane alleged to have violated Venezuela air space