NSA’s phone record collecting is legal despite chance of imperiling ‘civil liberties of every citizen’: judge

|


The National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ telephone records “only works [to counter the threat of terrorism] because it collects everything,” a judge has ruled.

NEW YORK — A federal judge on Friday found that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ telephone records is legal and a valuable part of the nation’s arsenal to counter the threat of terrorism and “only works because it collects everything.”

Ontario Parents need to be aware the the perils the civil liberties of every parent and child are threatened daily by the Corrupt vile, secretive private unaccountable private Ontario Corporations called "The Children's Aid Societies of Ontario".

But the judge noted that such a program, if unchecked, “imperils the civil liberties of every citizen” and said it was up to the executive and legislative branches of power to decide whether it should be used.

The decision contrasts with a ruling earlier this month by another U.S. District Court judge, Richard Leon, who granted a preliminary injunction against the collecting of phone records of two men who had challenged the program. Leon said the program likely violates the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search. The judge has since stayed the effect of his ruling, pending a government appeal.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge William Pauley said in a written opinion that the program “represents the government’s counter-punch” to eliminate Al-Qaeda’s terror network by connecting fragmented and fleeting communications.

“This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” Pauley said. “The collection is broad, but the scope of counterterrorism investigations is unprecedented.”

Pauley dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Attorney Brett Max Kaufman said the right group will appeal

The ACLU sued earlier this year after former NSA analyst Edward Snowden leaked details of the secret programs that critics say violate privacy rights. The NSA-run programs pick up millions of telephone and Internet records that are routed through American networks each day.

“We are pleased with the decision,” Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said.

An ACLU lawyer had argued that the government’s interpretation of its authority under the Patriot Act was so broad that it could justify the mass collection of financial, health and even library records of innocent Americans without their knowledge, including whether they had used a telephone sex hotline, contemplated suicide, been addicted to gambling or drugs or supported political causes.

A government lawyer had countered that counterterrorism investigators wouldn’t find most personal information useful.

Pauley said there were safeguards in place, including the fact the NSA cannot query the phone database it collects without legal justification and is limited in how much it can learn.

The judge said the mass collection of phone data “significantly increases the NSA’s capability to detect the faintest patterns left behind by individuals affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations. Armed with all the metadata, NSA can draw connections it might otherwise never be able to find.”

 

He added that such a program, if unchecked, “imperils the civil liberties of every citizen” and he noted the lively public debate about the subject.

“The question for this court is whether the government’s bulk telephony metadata program is lawful. This court finds it is. But the question of whether that program should be conducted is for the other two co-ordinate branches of government to decide,” he said.

In his ruling, the judge noted the Sept. 11, 2011 terrorist attacks and how the phone data-collection system could have helped investigators connect information before the attacks occurred.

“The government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program — a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data,” he said.

The Associated Press

Source National Post

Our View


Ontario lawyers have a more honest name for them, its "The Gestapo".


 Their absolute power continues to this day except it costs Ontario One Billion Dollars a year in direct costs and a staggering additional billions of dollars that is spent on the indirect secondary effects of this criminal organization who habitually fabricate evidence to justify their own bureaucracy with ever increasing funding that is to satisfy the every increasing numbers of staff and unfortunately, the number of children needlessly and criminally taken into care most of the time, without legal justification.


These out of control child abusers, have their own secret courts, their own judges who "rubber stamp" anything they want.

These criminals engage in unjustified defamation of parents by alluding that parents are a danger of harm to their children most of the time, without any justification or real evidence.


when it comes to evidence, these lowest forms of life habitually fabricate evidence.

Take the Children's Aid Society of Ottwa Lawyer Marguerite Isobel Lewis who fabricates evidence, omits evidence before former CAS lawyers turned judges to keep a child in care, apparently to protect fabrication of evidence by a Rogue Child Protection Worker Phillip Hiltz-Laforge who fabricates evidence as though its all in a days work.

There are many victims of the above who are too scared to come forward, the terror that the above cause to parents is unimaginable to most parents who have never had the misfortune of being the victim of Ontario's Child Abuse Society.

If you know of someone who has been the victim of Phillip Hiltz-Laforge or Marguerite Isobel Lewis or any other employee of the Children's Aid Societies of Ontario, please email StopCASdotca@Gmail.com  or call (613) 366-7580 and leave a contact number.


www.Stopcas.ca