First off, Snowden has not been judicious about what he has released. He gave everything he stole to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian and he is publishing whatever he wants. Just the other day he was in Brazil and said he would soon be publishing information on the US intelligence activities against Brazil and other Latin American countries. That has nothing to do with alleged Constitutional violations. He gave everything to the press and now they're printing whatever they want. It goes well beyond trying to stimulate a debate, which he could have done via legal channels.
Second, I see that you have a misunderstanding of the law. Allow me to clear that up for you.
First, some background. Before the FISA Amendments Act, the FISA allowed the government access to only foreign-to-foreign communications that resided solely outside of the United States. So if a terrorist were to call a non-US citizen in the US, they couldn't collect that. If a terrorist called from Pakistan to Yemen and the communication went through switches in the US, the government couldn't collect that. This shortcoming was part of what was called out by the 9/11 commission report. So in order to address the holes in the system, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. This did a number of things:
Section 702 allowed for the collection of communications with foreign intelligence value between two non-US citizens, but allowed that only one side of the communication had to be outside of the US. This closed the hole of foreigners outside of the US communicating with foreigners inside of the US. It did not allow for the collection of any communication involving a US citizen. We'll talk about that more later.
Section 703 set the requirements for collection of communications of a US citizen outside of the United States from communications infrastructure within the United States. Unlike 702, this requires a specific and limited court order and the bar for obtaining said court order is higher than in 702.
Section 704 set the requirements for collection of communications of a US citizen outside of the Unites States from communications infrastructure outside of the United States, and the requirements are generally the same as 703.
The complete text of the law can be found
here.
So I'm assuming the part you're incorrectly arguing is the Section 702, so we'll address that. Section 702 restricts the collection using the following requirements (from the bill linked above):
So as you can see above, the target cannot be a US person, it must be a foreigner outside of the US. You can also see as per provision 5 that the collection must be consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Thus, the idea that calling anyone outside of the US would subject a citizen of the US to monitoring of their communications just isn't true. If a call takes place inside the US, whether between two citizens, two foreigners, or any combination of such, those can't be collected. If a call takes place between a US citizen and a foreigner then, per the Fourth Amendment, those calls can't be collected unless certain criteria is met as mentioned in the legislation (enter the minimization procedures leaked by Snowden.) If a call takes place between a foreigner outside of the US and a non-citizen inside the US, then the collection is allowed under Section 702.
My assumption is not that what they're doing is right simply be WE don't know the answers. My contention is that these laws and programs have been and are continuously reviewed by all three branches of government and they continue them. That is the system of checks and balances and oversight we have in the US. As I mentioned before, this is not a straight democracy. People don't get to vote on everything the government does. They elect representatives and those representatives make and enforce the laws.
And you are not simply asking questions. You are making accusations and assuming facts which are not there. If you want to discuss alternatives and other solutions, then fine. But all that is being done here is claiming as truth that the government and the people who work for it are breaking the law and then demanding these programs end. That is not a well-informed debate and it is not being done by people who are willing to investigate and accept the outcome the facts point to.
Really, the only conspiracies here, are the ones that you and others that think like you make up, without fact, that I argue against because of their lack of evidence. I'm not making these up. You guys are.
And don't worry. I don't kid myself about America being the only country that does this. However, I think you kid yourself to think that these other countries have advanced systems to be on par with what the US has done. I would be willing to bet that other countries such as the UK, Canada, and Australia do participate and contribute to US efforts, but I would be willing to bet they ride the coat tails of the systems we have in place in order to achieve their objectives. And BTW, it is illegal for the US to "reverse target" people by either targeting foreigners in order to get information on Americans or go to other countries who can collect against Americans in order to circumvent what they can do. However, as always, I would gladly welcome any proof of that claim from your end. Otherwise, it's just another conspiracy theory.
Finally, in real and practical terms, unless you're contacting terrorists, you don't have to worry about the government doing anything with your communications. They have finite resources and aren't going to worry about some guy calling his friend the UK (unless that friend is a terrorist they are watching, at which point, your communications should be monitored.)
I'll be anxious to see it as well. I'm willing to bet it actually doesn't show the NSA playing "footloose and fancy free" and that it complies with all laws and court orders.
That's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Maybe since the misdoings of Enron were the catalyst for various securities and financial overhauls, their guilt should be absolved as well, right? Just because Snowden spurred debate, doesn't mean he didn't break the law. He had legal avenues to report what he thought were wrongdoings. Stealing classified information and taking it upon himself to decide what he thinks is right and wrong and releasing information to news outlets is against the law. And the government is taking steps to assure the American public they're not doing anything wrong. They never said anything that was done was wrong as Snowden alleged. So I would argue that he isn't even "right".
What? This doesn't even make sense or relate at all to what I said and further supports my beliefs on your comprehension skills.
