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So can Snowden go back to the USA now then ?

Without getting arrested/whatever.

 reds8n wrote:
So can Snowden go back to the USA now then ?

Without getting arrested/whatever.

No.. still broken laws.

Had he taken up actual legal whistleblower status... that'd be a different story.

 Manchu wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
do you really think someone necessarily has to be a lawyer in order to have enough education, knowledge, or experience to form a reasonable opinion about a legal issue and then write about it?

That really depends on what you mean by "reasonable." Being a lawyer is certainly not sufficient to make a definitive proclamation about the constitutionality of a law (you need to be at least five Supreme Court Justices to do that) ... and yet that is exactly what the poster to whom I responded did. But I don't get the feeling you really had that extreme example in mind. Still, I need more information about what you mean by "reasonable." It seems most people think "constitutional" and "what seems good to me" are one and the same. But that's hardly the basis for a reasonable opinion about the law. And of course one doesn't need a juris doctorate (much less to be a practicing attorney) to think and write about law coherently; there are certainly other ways to study law in this country just as you can be educated about particle physics without earning a Ph.D.

Okay, thank you for clarifying. I think we agree. By reasonable I meant primarily reasonable with at least some credible justification, but without having a juris doctorate.

 Manchu wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
that doesn't mean I can't express a view on the law, or even the US constitution

By all means, express your views. But perhaps preface them as described above.

So without a legal degree of some sort you can't proffer opinion on laws without a self deprecating preamble ? That's bizarre to me.


Show of hands in this thread if you have a legal degree ?

I have three, so I can chime in.


back on topic:
Glad they ruled this way, next up get rid of the Patriot Act.

 Haight wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
that doesn't mean I can't express a view on the law, or even the US constitution

By all means, express your views. But perhaps preface them as described above.

So without a legal degree of some sort you can't proffer opinion on laws without a self deprecating preamble ? That's bizarre to me.


Show of hands in this thread if you have a legal degree ?

I have three, so I can chime in.


back on topic:
Glad they ruled this way, next up get rid of the Patriot Act.

Manchu and I literally just discussed this. If you look at what he and I posted you'll see that that's not what he's saying.

 Hordini wrote:

 Haight wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
that doesn't mean I can't express a view on the law, or even the US constitution

By all means, express your views. But perhaps preface them as described above.

So without a legal degree of some sort you can't proffer opinion on laws without a self deprecating preamble ? That's bizarre to me.


Show of hands in this thread if you have a legal degree ?

I have three, so I can chime in.


back on topic:
Glad they ruled this way, next up get rid of the Patriot Act.

Manchu and I literally just discussed this. If you look at what he and I posted you'll see that that's not what he's saying.

Except that what he says int he clarification is not, literally, what he said in reference to what i quoted ; he said that if people aren't lawyers they shouldn't open up with "i'm not a lawyer" but rather "I lack the education to speak on this topic"

That's a pretty bold statement. Clarification or no.


Also physics and law are a bit different. Science and Math tend to be less subjective than something like Law. Sure theories evovle (and listen, i'm not a scientist, so if i'm wrong here, i'm all ears!) - law evolves, changes, over time. Sometimes drastically. Sometimes so drastically that laws get overturned due to irrelevance or changing social norms. The sciences tend to be, once out of hypothesis territory - so possibly Physics isn't the best example - a lot more concrete once proven. So a proven theory and an upheld law .... a proven theory unless something REALLY drastic takes place in the scientific community remains a proven theory. A law, even if upheld, 100 years later can be completely overturned.


But that shouldn't require anyone to have formal legal training to form opinions and talk about it and opening up with "I dont have the education required to speak on this".



Just so there's no confusion, this is the exact post i was responding to (which i quoted a comment in reference to it, but not it directly):

 Manchu wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but

Ugh. Why is it that you never read, "I'm not a particle physicist, but" statements on the internet? Instead of writing, "I'm not a a lawyer, but" folks should just write "I don't have the education, knowledge, training, or experience to write about this issue, but."

What do we infer from that other than if someone lacks Legal education, knowledge, training, or experience, then they don't know enough to write about the issue ?

Most people don't have those things, but most people have opinions on laws. That's why i found the suggested (and what i quoted) preamble bizarre.

Well, that's why I asked him for clarification. And if you're only looking at that post by itself, then yes, I suppose you could infer that - but again, not to speak for him, but based on his clarification that doesn't appear to be what Manchu is really trying to say.

The law is a specialized body of knowledge. It is absurd to follow disclaiming that knowledge by declaring legal conclusions. And yet it is nevertheless a common practice and an irritating one. If people were to say aloud or write out that they are completely ignorant about the subject on which they are about to opine, they may find it is more suitable to pose a question rather than pronounce a judgment.

 reds8n wrote:
So can Snowden go back to the USA now then ?

Without getting arrested/whatever.

Nope. Unless he gets lucky with jury nullification, he's due to be old and grey when he gets out of prison even with minimum sentencing.

 Manchu wrote:
The law is a specialized body of knowledge. It is absurd to follow disclaiming that knowledge by declaring legal conclusions. And yet it is nevertheless a common practice and an irritating one. If people were to say aloud or write out that they are completely ignorant about the subject on which they are about to opine, they may find it is more suitable to pose a question rather than pronounce a judgment.

What does any of this have to do with the actual topic?

Now i'm not a mod, but we seem to have gotten slightly derailed here.

Back on topic: good on the appeals court.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
What does any of this have to do with the actual topic?

Treating this as an honest question: Whether the NSA's program violates the Fourth Amendment is not a foregone conclusion despite uninformed sentiment. The Second Circuit did not accidentally approach its ruling from a non-Constitutional perspective.

 Manchu wrote:
The law is a specialized body of knowledge. It is absurd to follow disclaiming that knowledge by declaring legal conclusions. And yet it is nevertheless a common practice and an irritating one. If people were to say aloud or write out that they are completely ignorant about the subject on which they are about to opine, they may find it is more suitable to pose a question rather than pronounce a judgment.

Okay, this I get, and now makes sense. This in and of itself would make a great thread. There's a legal term for it - the logic of advocacy and / or ethics of advocacy, but as such, is probably now OT in this thread.

I hope you didn't think i was taking shots, I just found the statements interesting and worth pursuing into discussion.



.... BTW, i almost 100% agree with the sentiment as stated above. There's tons of threads on the law and legal conclusions on this site that i bow out of once we hit the nadir of legal logic passing over into "personal opinion being proffered as legal logic".




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
What does any of this have to do with the actual topic?

Treating this as an honest question: Whether the NSA's program violates the Fourth Amendment is not a foregone conclusion despite uninformed sentiment. The Second Circuit did not accidentally approach its ruling from a non-Constitutional perspective.

Yup.

I was preparing to turn the conversation towards this tangent, but Manchu clarified his thoughts to such a degree that it's not now necessary.

It was not OT, it was developing a tangent which has now not panned out.

 Manchu wrote:
Treating this as an honest question: Whether the NSA's program violates the Fourth Amendment is not a foregone conclusion despite uninformed sentiment.

Note that there are two separate questions here: whether or not the government has found some loophole or "reinterpretation" of the fourth amendment that technically allows this (a question that requires a lot of legal knowledge to answer) and whether or not the NSA program should be found to violate the fourth amendment (a much simpler question that anyone can answer). Even if the answer to the first question is "yes" it just proves that the government has so thoroughly undermined the fourth amendment that even blatant violations like the NSA program are somehow "legal".

Rather than constitutionality, or legality generally, I think your second question has to do with whether people feel comfortable with what the NSA is doing. People are substituting a legal conclusion ("that's unconstitutional") for an emotional sentiment ("I don't like that"). It's perfectly legitimate to argue that the government should not do things you don't like; it's just not a legal argument and it has nothing to do with what is or isn't constitutional.

 Manchu wrote:
Rather than constitutionality, or legality generally, I think your second question has to do with whether people feel comfortable with what the NSA is doing. People are substituting a legal conclusion ("that's unconstitutional") for an emotional sentiment ("I don't like that"). It's perfectly legitimate to argue that the government should not do things you don't like; it's just not a legal argument and it has nothing to do with what is or isn't constitutional.

No, I don't think that's accurate at all. There are clearly things that people are uncomfortable with, but have to concede are legal. The issue that people have with the NSA program is that it's blatantly a violation of the intent of the fourth amendment, and if a court says "this is constitutional" it will just be evidence that the government has so thoroughly undermined the fourth amendment's protections (TOUGH ON CRIME! TERRORISM!!!!) that even the most blatant violations can still find some kind of loophole to be "legal".

Now the Director of National Intelligence is saying he forgot such a program existed:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/09/intel-chief-absolutely-forgot-about-nsa-data-sweep-program-attorney-says/

It reminds me of this old Steve Martin joke:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l00GGEy_72c

The NSA program is actually not "blatantly unconstitutional" except where "unconstitutional" is used to express some non-legal sentiment. Whether there can be a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information at issue is as the Second Circuit extensively concedes a very thorny legal issue.

 Manchu wrote:
The NSA program is actually not "blatantly unconstitutional" except where "unconstitutional" is used to express some non-legal sentiment.

What about it is constitutional? It's a warrantless search with no probable cause. The only reason this is even up for debate at all is that the government has made a consistent effort to undermine our fourth amendment rights and replace it with "no warrantless searches, unless the police really want to do it".

Whether there can be a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information at issue is as the Second Circuit extensively concedes a very thorny legal issue.

Of course there's a reasonable expectation of privacy, that's why the government had to order phone/internet companies to hand it over instead of just looking at public information. The only reason anyone wouldn't expect privacy is that we all know that the government doesn't care one bit about the legality of its searches as long as they say "terrorism" enough times, and so your "private" information is only private if the government voluntarily allows it to be.

The Fourth Amendment only applies to unreasonable searches/seizures. Corporate data policies are not prima facie evidence of a reasonable expectation of privacy.

 Peregrine wrote:

Of course there's a reasonable expectation of privacy...

I'm pretty sure Lego could figure out where you live. Hell, if I knew your real name I could easily do the same with little effort. Welcome to the internet, and all the complicated legal issues associated with it.

 Peregrine wrote:

...that's why the government had to order phone/internet companies to hand it over instead of just looking at public information.

That statement doesn't make sense to me. What is the distinction between public and private information?

 Manchu wrote:
The Fourth Amendment only applies to unreasonable searches/seizures. Corporate data policies are not prima facie evidence of a reasonable expectation of privacy.

There was a case during the Prohibition that would go against what you're saying.... There was a rum runner up in Seattle who was for a time, a Detective on the force. Seeing the money being made in booze he started doing that on the side, and via phone taps was ultimately caught and sent to prison. While imprisoned his lawyers appealed, until finally the Supreme Court determined that ALL wire taps needed the same level of warrants and procedure as any other search/seizure method, and his case was overturned.


So, in my eyes, the NSA doing what amounts to the same exact thing, is just as unconstitutional as the wire-taps in the 1920s, even if we're talking different technology.

After re-reading some of these posts, I think the following should happen:

Dakka should build a time machine and go back and tell James Madison that he can't write the US constitution because he's not an expert on constitutional law

They should also tell George Washington he can't be a General because he was never promoted above the rank of Colonel, when he served in the militia.

They should Alexander Hamilton not to set up a federal reserve because he'd never ran a bank before in his life

and the founding fathers shouldn't declare independence, because none of them had ever done that before, either.

 Manchu wrote:
The Fourth Amendment only applies to unreasonable searches/seizures. Corporate data policies are not prima facie evidence of a reasonable expectation of privacy.

This isn't a corporate data policy we're talking about, it's the federal government giving a direct order (with the threat of legal consequences for refusing) to hand over the data despite the companies wanting to keep it private.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dogma wrote:
I'm pretty sure Lego could figure out where you live. Hell, if I knew your real name I could easily do the same with little effort. Welcome to the internet, and all the complicated legal issues associated with it.

But what does that have to do with anything? Getting my name out of the phone book is not even close to the same as the government showing up with a court order and demanding that you hand over information about me.

That statement doesn't make sense to me. What is the distinction between public and private information?

There isn't a perfectly clear one because different members of the public have access to different information, but here's a good general rule: can the average person get access to this information without breaking any laws or investing a completely unreasonable amount of effort? So, for example, my address is public information because anyone can get from easily-available sources, and I have no reasonable expectation that it will be otherwise*. The metadata on my cell phone use, on the other hand, is private information because the average person has no access to it outside of implausible scenarios like "win the lottery, buy the cell phone company, and read the data". That's why the government had to show up with legal threats and say "give us Peregrine's cell phone metadata" instead of just google searching "Peregrine's cell phone metadata" and reading the search results. Without the threat of fines/prison time/etc to force the cell phone company to hand over the information against their will they would have no way of getting it.


*I do, of course, have a reasonable expectation that people will not behave badly with that information and send me spam/call in a fake "hostage situation" at my address/show up in person to harass me/etc.

 Peregrine wrote:

But what does that have to do with anything? Getting my name out of the phone book is not even close to the same as the government showing up with a court order and demanding that you hand over information about me.

If I got your name out of a phone book I would at least also have your area code, the confluence of those two things is basically gold when you have internet access and a few minutes of free time. Honestly I'm surprised some enterprising soul hasn't started data mining social networks and selling the information to concerned parties...oh, wait.

Anyway, the point is that the government has so many ways to work around a strict interpretation of the 4th, with respect to data, that getting angry over the fact that it know's who you called is kind of ridiculous.

 Peregrine wrote:

There isn't a perfectly clear one because different members of the public have access to different information, but here's a good general rule: can the average person get access to this information without breaking any laws or investing a completely unreasonable amount of effort?

I wanted to send my ex-girlfriend a surprise birthday present a few years back. I didn't know her address, but I knew she was living with her mom and that her mom went through a rather nasty divorce several years before she met me. I searched court records and bam, address. That took less than 5 minutes.

 Peregrine wrote:

Without the threat of fines/prison time/etc to force the cell phone company to hand over the information against their will they would have no way of getting it.

You're speaking about Verizon, right?

 dogma wrote:
If I got your name out of a phone book I would at least also have your area code, the confluence of those two things is basically gold when you have internet access and a few minutes of free time.

But my area code is something that's easy to get if you know anything about me. If you really cared enough you could figure it out based on my posting history here (which stores I've commented on, etc). You aren't forcing access to information, you're just passively observing things that are out there for anyone to see and using your own skill at drawing conclusions from information to figure out the answer.

Anyway, the point is that the government has so many ways to work around a strict interpretation of the 4th, with respect to data, that getting angry over the fact that it know's who you called is kind of ridiculous.

Well yeah, that's the problem, the government has consistently undermined the fourth amendment protections we're supposed to have. And the data in question isn't just a list of people you've called, it includes things like the length of the call, the location it was made from, etc. There's no way to get that information without either forcing the cell phone company to provide it, or tapping into the phone network to listen to it.

I wanted to send my ex-girlfriend a surprise birthday present a few years back. I didn't know her address, but I knew she was living with her mom and that her mom went through a rather nasty divorce several years before she met me. I searched court records and bam, address. That took less than 5 minutes.

Yes, but that's because court records are public information. Anyone who wants to see them can go to the courthouse and read them (or even read them online, depending on the location and how old the records are) without having to prove that they "need" to/show proper credentials/etc. The same is not true of cell phone metadata, which is completely inaccessible unless you show up with a court order and the threat of jail time for refusing to provide it.

You're speaking about Verizon, right?

And others. The government asked for the information, some (all?) companies refused, so the government got a secret order from a secret court and took it by force.

 Peregrine wrote:

But my area code is something that's easy to get if you know anything about me. If you really cared enough you could figure it out based on my posting history here (which stores I've commented on, etc). You aren't forcing access to information, you're just passively observing things that are out there for anyone to see and using your own skill at drawing conclusions from information to figure out the answer.

So you're fine with most of PRISM? Or, rather, you're fine with private entities collecting (and selling) your data, so long as the government doesn't collect your data directly?

 dogma wrote:
So you're fine with most of PRISM?

I'm not going to answer that because "most" is incredibly vague, "fine with" is not the same as "constitutional", and we don't even know everything about PRISM. If you want an answer on that subject you'll need to clarify which parts of PRISM you're asking if I approve of, and whether you're talking about "I think this is good policy" or "I think this is illegal".

Or, rather, you're fine with private entities collecting (and selling) your data, so long as the government doesn't collect your data directly?

That's an entirely different question that has nothing to do with this topic.

This sums up how I feel:



I do think it's interesting that people on either side of the political spectrum are both pissed off about this and extremely happy.

 Peregrine wrote:
This isn't a corporate data policy we're talking about

Yes it is. As you point out:

 Peregrine wrote:
despite the companies wanting to keep it private