Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Second rate reporter says what?

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

You are here: Home / Federal Judge Rules NSA Phone Records Collection Is Lawful

Federal Judge Rules NSA Phone Records Collection Is Lawful

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In a stunning dudebro reversal that caused twee mustaches nationwide to go limp from ennui yesterday, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the NSA’s mass surveillance tactics are legal after all:

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York on Friday ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically keeping phone records of all Americans is lawful, creating a conflict among lower courts and increasing the likelihood that the issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court.

Astute observers will recall that just a couple of weeks back, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that it was probably unconstitutional for the NSA to indiscriminately hoover up millions of phone records.

If this does reach the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor will bear watching. At age 59, Sotomayor is most emphatically an Old who probably relies on her nieces and nephews to set up her iPhone and establish interconnectivity for home entertainment devices.

Over the recent holiday break, it’s entirely possible that Sotomayor joined fellow Boomer dinosaurs in causing Millennial eyerolls around the Christmas table with cloud-shouting comments about The Twitter and admonitions to the Youngs about posting candid photos to The Facebook.

This is a safe assumption since Sotomayor’s legal rulings reveal a profound ignorance about today’s reality, i.e., there is no privacy because Internet, and anyone who insists that there should be is: a) old, b) dumb, or c) both old and dumb:

“It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties,” Sotomayor wrote in 2012. “This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.”

Lumber off to the tar pit, already, old woman! Government agents aren’t hacking into your computer to spy on your LOLcats!

Anyhoo, this Robed Anachronism may soon have another opportunity to argue that a 1979 ruling involving a phone company and its ne’er-do-well customer isn’t sufficient to manage privacy expectations on Planet Cloud, with profound implications for the sanctity of LOLcats and pØrn stashes (as opposed to pØrn ‘staches) throughout the world.

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  2. 2.

    watergirl

    Betty, either I’m not understanding what you’re trying to say, or we are reading Sotomayor’s words differently, in opposite ways.

    I think she’s saying that in the world today we have to give all sorts of information to everybody in order to do anything, so the whole “no reasonable expectation of privacy” argument is no longer valid.

    But I am not a lawyer.

    Edit: and I see baud said the same thing I did, only in fewer words. Mine took longer to type!

  3. 3.

    JR

    WTF does this post mean? It’s like BC tried a backhanded hippie punch, tripped on her snark attack and cartwheeled off stage into the orchestra pit.

    It’s ok not to post, you know. When there’s no point I mean.

  5. 5.

    chopper

    @JR:

    I dunno. She may be arguing that soto is not going to vote with the angels. She may even be arguing in good faith, I dunno. These NSA threads are all ruined anyways so who knows, amirite?

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @JR:

    It’s like BC tried a backhanded hippie punch, tripped on her snark attack and cartwheeled off stage into the orchestra pit.

    So just another Saturday in the Cracker household.

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    It looks like it might be too early in the morning for snark. Recalibrate those snarkmeters, folks.

  11. 11.

    fka AWS

    “It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties,” Sotomayor wrote in 2012. “This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.”

    While it’s a pretty densely-packed statement, the meaning seems reasonably clear. I had to read it with some more coffee, a second time, though.

  12. 12.

    Botsplainer

    Betty is just fine with the notion of light speed shifting of assets and information with no retention requirements.

    Anything to keep LOLcat collections away from the possibility of government retrieval even if it means that meatspace becomes hella more dangerous.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    @watergirl:

    I think she’s saying that in the world today we have to give all sorts of information to everybody in order to do anything, so the whole “no reasonable expectation of privacy” argument is no longer valid.

    That’s what I think she’s saying too. But as many right here at Balloon Juice have reminded us, only a dumb old person would make such an argument because only a blithering idiot could expect any privacy whatsoever if they access the Internet. Ah well, snarkFAIL. Won’t be the first. Won’t be the last.

    @JR: I’ve also been assured that there is no penalty for not commenting!

  19. 19.

    Insomniac

    Sounds like a try at a whole boat load of snark. Also, a stab at the so-called NSA defenders and people insufficiently outraged at the extensive NSA data collection activities. Sotomayor appears to be of the mind that there should be a different (more expansive perhaps) expectation of privacy given the digital age NWO we’re living in now.

  20. 20.

    fka AWS

    @Betty Cracker: Perhaps your snark is of too high a quality for our feeble, early-morning, uncaffeinated brains.

    Also, the court has adapted its rulings to new technology before (the difference between the FCC’s ability to regulate broadcast vs. cable, for instance), so it might (hopefully) do so again.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    @fka AWS: Or of too low quality to break the Poe barrier — you’d think I’d learn! But yeah, I’m hoping the court will accommodate new realities if they rule on this issue, and if so, Sotomayor might lead the charge. Given the current composition, though, who knows?

  25. 25.

    Botsplainer

    A quick rhetorical question for the class – what is the legal remedy for the attempted use of illegally obtained evidence by the executive?

  26. 26.

    Baud

    @Insomniac:

    people insufficiently outraged at the extensive NSA data collection activities.

    One doesn’t have to be outraged to desire more safeguards.

  27. 27.

    dpm (dread pirate mistermix)

    @Betty Cracker: The only prediction I have on the court is that a ruling against NSA data collection will spark a Scalia dissent in the form of a recital of Giovinezza from the bench.

  28. 28.

    chopper

    @Baud:

    Either you’re totes outraged or you think it’s a ‘white people problem’. There is no middle ground allowed here, trust me.

  29. 29.

    different-church-lady

    What do we want to bet that by the time all the courts have ruled their rulings, we’re going to be living in a world where some of the internet thingies we do have an expectation of privacy, and some of the internet thingies we do don’t, and nobody on any political blogs is going to be interested in understanding which is which?

  34. 34.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    I figured BC wrote the post on a bender and scheduled it to be published this morning.

  37. 37.

    Citizen_X

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, but it’s 11-dimensional Poe’s Law double-reverse snark. We’re all lost in hyperspace now.

    Just say “Snowden: HERO” or “TRAITOR,” Betty. Then we’ll know which side you’ve chosen. Which is all that matters.

  38. 38.

    danielx

    @Botsplainer:

    A quick rhetorical question for the class – what is the legal remedy for the attempted use of illegally obtained evidence by the executive?

    Good question, what would it be? A judge throws out the case? Prosecutorial misconduct, state or federal, is very seldom punished in any meaningful way even if a prosecutor outright makes shit up and cops perjure themselves (naw, doesn’t happen, new police professionalism!) about how evidence was obtained. Prosecutorial immunity makes it…improbable that serious sanctions apply to prosecutors, so just what is the legal remedy that doesn’t involve some poor soul sitting in the Graybar Hotel for an extended stay, assuming that evidence is found to be illegally obtained at all? Grrrr…

    Courts (Supreme and others) have been whittling away at the Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment and the exclusionary rule in particular for oh, forty years now because the War on Terra and the War on Droogs, aka the War on Your Neighbors and Other Americans Which Also Has The Side Effect Of Disenfranchising Lots Of Brown People. (It’s a feature, not a bug!) It seems that the entire concept of ‘illegally obtained evidence’ is increasingly viewed as…quaint.

    Betty said a couple of weeks ago that Judge Leon made the correct decision; I admit I was surprised by the decision at the time, especially from a judge appointed by Dubya – er, He Who Must Not Be Named. In the event that this issue ends up in front of the Supremes, I’d bet twenty bucks against a stale doughnut that ‘a compelling state interest’ or some such verbiage will be found to be the controlling factor and that consequently the NSA is allowed to do pretty much whatever they want. And if not – going back to Botsplainer’s question – whaddyagonna do? The Supremes are going to send US Marshals to arrest James Clapper or Keith Alexander for contempt of court? Yeah, that’s going to happen, and pigs might have wings, and the moon is made of exceedingly edible green cheese…

  39. 39.

    RSR

    Atrios is often intrigued by the falling use of cars (and obtaining drivers licenses) by teens and young adults. I wonder about a chicken-and-egg scenario with cars and social media and the details in the study.

    Do kids use social media to replace the vehicles they don’t have? Or are they willing to give up having a car or accept less frequent use of a shared family-vehicle, because they can supplement face time with Facetime ™?

    And social media use is certainly very prevalent among city kids who live in dense areas and have access to mass transit.

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Um, Betty, you’re really not very into Internet tradiitons.

    It’s pr0n, not p0rn.

    /pedant

    On edit: I see bago beat me to it waaay upthread.

  42. 42.

    ruemara

    Getting to the actual meat of the decision: one of the things I found interesting was the knowledge that although the FISA courts seem to be rubberstamping approvals, there’s a level of scrutiny that is applied prior to requesting a FISA warrant. This decision seems to be muddying things even more than before, because the reporting is so sensationalist on the subject. A necessary thing to discuss as citizens is ridiculously harder to discuss than ever. And frankly, I don’t find officially left “reportage” hyperbole free. You shouldn’t feel stupider after reading something, you should feel as if you understand the basics of the issue. Beyond reading ars technica, most of what’s been said is downright prejudicial and lacking.

    @chopper: I think it’s a white people’s problem, a libertarian dudebro boogyman and I think it’s too large, too much data mining and too much outsourcing. It can be both.

  45. 45.

    Cassidy

    So, first off, props to Betty for posting about this. You guys jumped on the last ruling like a bishop on a boy. I figured our own little Bobo would be too chickenshit to bring it up, but you were wiling to, so good on ya.

    Secondly, it pisses me off to no end that we’ll have yet another 200+ comments on this fucking topic, yet the previous topic of a real police state putting two young women in jail for speaking their mind, and one can only imagine what they endured in Siberian prison, only elicits 23 fucking comments. So, next time one of you assholes decide to make a Stasi or East Germany or police state reference, kindly blow it out your ass; you, apparently, wouldn’t know a police state if you saw one.

    Lastly, posting while drunk is a horrible plan.

  46. 46.

    AnonPhenom

    ” there is no privacy because Internet, and anyone who insists that there should be is: a) old, b) dumb, or c) both old and dumb”

    Right. So because ‘half’ the population has decided to take their shits with the bathroom door open that’s a justification for getting rid of bathroom doors altogether because baby boomers.

    Genius.

  47. 47.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @ranchandsyrup:

    First comment from your link:

    But Obama instructs a Democrat appointed Judge to provide an opposite judgement to a GOP appointed Judge.

    US Law would seem to be anything BUT Lawful.

    Actually looking at the ruling would be just too much work for the Rethuglican dudebros who hates themselves some near Presidents.

  48. 48.

    Felonius Monk

    Remember, folks. Any e-mail message older than 6 months does not require a search warrant anyway under current law.

  49. 49.

    danielx

    Huh….I have had comments go into moderation before, although in this case I couldn’t really see why. But to have one disappear altogether after posting? WTF?

    Just another mystery…the Tunch OBEY tshirt order I placed for my niece’s Christmas present seems to have disappeared too. CafePress’s customer service isn’t very serviceable.

  51. 51.

    Fuzzy

    @Botsplainer: I have no idea what you said. It’s words hooked together that an un-hip rural person like me has no hope of straightening out. Maybe that’s the point .

  59. 59.

    Joey Giraud

    @Cassidy:

    Check my math? not my calculations.

    But kc is basically correct, even if the numbers aren’t exactly correct.

    I think your police-state purity test sucks balls. Like saying if you’re not coughing up blood you can’t really have cancer.

  64. 64.

    dollared

    @Joey Giraud: This. Nobody has provided any proof that “meatspace will be hella more dangerous” if the NSA can’t have and process all our metadata. None.

    And it really is obvious that the fact that internet info is fully available does not invalidate the fourth amendment, or any other right to privacy. The solution to this kind of problem has always existed:

    1. rules of conduct requiring a particular, focused reason for the inquiry
    2. End to end transparency about the a) the generation of the “reason” for the inquiry, b) its assessment by a qualified, impartial court official, and c) the conduct of the inquiry.

    We’ve had those rules forever. The NSA crap is just standard police resistance to application of the 4th amendment to all new areas of inquiry. Just like wiretapping a generation ago, And there are always police enthusiasts ready to abandon the Constitution for their drama fantasies. @Botsplainer:

  66. 66.

    burnspbesq

    @dollared:

    And it really is obvious that the fact that internet info is fully available does not invalidate the fourth amendment, or any other right to privacy.

    WADR, that’s not only non-obvious, it’s 180 degrees opposite from what the law is. Or did you miss the part of the opinion that reminds everybody that Jones did not overrule Smith?

    You may not like Smith. I may not like Smith. Justice Sotomayor pretty clearly doesn’t like Smith. Until five Justices say otherwise, Smith Is the law.

  68. 68.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @burnspbesq:

    You may not like Smith. I may not like Smith. Justice Sotomayor pretty clearly doesn’t like Smith. Until five Justices say otherwise, Smith Is the law.

    I don’t want to live in a country where a comment-thread quorum can’t set legal precedent.

  69. 69.

    dollared

    @burnspbesq: Burns, luv ya. There is no law on this. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not settled. Because it’s a new area. The Supremes have not ruled on this. So there are choices. Plain sight or wiretap rules? That’s the choice. We can argue that the Supremes are so pro-cop that they will rule that all internet data is plain sight, but that’s not legal reasoning, that’s handicapping. Legal reasoning would argue for the wiretap rules.

  70. 70.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @burnspbesq:

    Which is our problem. right there. Sotomayor clearly thinks that some serious rethinking of privacy rights and the application of the 4th Amendment are needed, but fat chance that Fat Tony will agree, because he’s too busy defending the 1% and corporate America’s right to rifle through your underwear drawer in the name of profit.

  71. 71.

    burnspbesq

    @dollared:

    ETA: your statement of the “issue” is pretty disingenuous. The real question is, as it has been for the last century of ebbs and flows in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, “is there a reasonable expectation of privacy?” Or, more specifically in this case, is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in information that I voluntarily give away?

    Now, one could argue that the information was voluntarily given away for a limited purpose, and should only be non-private as to third parties for uses consistent with the purpose for which it was given away in the first place. But let’s at least be clear about how huge a change in the theory of the Fourth Amendment that would be.

  72. 72.

    burnspbesq

    @dollared:

    There is no law on this.

    You’re thinking about law like an accountant.

    Smith is dead on point. Smith says there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in phone numbers that the customer gives to the phone company in order to complete calls.

    The NSA is nothing but a big-ass pen register.

  73. 73.

    Cassidy

    @Joey Giraud: Fortunately, you and kc have about as much influence on my opinion as the sweat on a pit bull’s balls. It’s not purity knucklehead. It’s precedent. We know what a police state looks like. We have documented history of the terror that is unleashed in its citizens. In some places, they’re still looking for missing bodies. Equating the actions of the NSA to a police state just makes you look stupid.

  74. 74.

    different-church-lady

    @ranchandsyrup: I always thought the “dudebro” designation missed the cultural mark when it came to privacy fetishists, but now I’m not so sure.

    It’s just sad how immature they’re acting. I mean, it’s hardly different at all from virulent Teabaggers, except that they might have an actual legitimate point under all the petulance. But they just can’t seem to see how the petulance hides the point instead of helping it.

  76. 76.

    Cacti

    @burnspbesq:

    You’re thinking about law like an accountant.

    Smith is dead on point. Smith says there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in phone numbers that the customer gives to the phone company in order to complete calls.

    This.

    Leon’s opinion said Smith doesn’t apply because of the difference in scope.

    Pauley’s opinion said that Smith applies, and that scope is irrelevant unless the SCOTUS wants to make their own distinction on that issue.

    While reaching different conclusions, both addressed Smith v. Maryland at length.

    If both the DC and Second Circuit courts of appeals affirm the holding in Smith on telephony metadata, it’s likely that the SCOTUS would deny cert for any subsequent appeal.

  78. 78.

    max

    @burnspbesq: The real question is, as it has been for the last century of ebbs and flows in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,

    Strictly speaking, that would be during the last 30-40 years, during the anti-black reactionary revolt.

    “is there a reasonable expectation of privacy?”

    Well, no. But that’s because ‘a reasonable expectation of privacy’ is a highly malleable standard which only ratchets one way. (Kinda like ‘separate but equal’ – when someone complained about the separate part someone comes and says the broken down impoverished schools given to blacks were ‘equal’ and also the darkies don’t need any better, and what are you, some kind of race mixer? That was the law of the land, and in practical effect an outright contradiction of ‘deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’

    Or, more specifically in this case, is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in information that I voluntarily give away?

    Generally, when Americans send each other mail, they expect it to be private. (Backed by the laws of Congress.) In practice, you can pretty much rip open anyone’s mail anytime you feel like – but that doing so means the stuff doesn’t get to used as be evidence, unless you have a warrant.

    However, as usually happens with new technology, the old people who ran the show in Congress wound up convinced that e-mail (or other forms of electronic communication) is *distinct* from real mail, because these kids today with their machine that goes *BOING*. Given that combination with reactionary winger judges, and what we have here is a back door repeal of the Fourth Amendment.

    Now, one could argue that the information was voluntarily given away for a limited purpose, and should only be non-private as to third parties for uses consistent with the purpose for which it was given away in the first place.

    Quite.

    But let’s at least be clear about how huge a change in the theory of the Fourth Amendment that would be.

    Or perhaps, how radical the ‘constitutional restoration’ movement is, and how successful they’ve been in getting rid of things they don’t like.

    At any rate, if all anyone was doing were collecting metadata, you could make a plausible argument that was a search without a warrant, but in combination with all the other nooks and crannies of collections, it’s pretty clean that they have created an effect exactly like issuing a general warrant, without the part where they at least have to get a warrant. And it’s also pretty clear that they (the FBI and the DEA!) have used that data to create criminal cases while concealing the fact that the evidence they have used has been the fruit of the poisoned tree.

    And that, children, is one of the many reasons why we live in a country where our per cap imprisonment rate is twice that of Russia’s.

    max
    {‘I think everyone agrees on one thing though – Jesus Christ do these threads suck.’]

  79. 79.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Is this the case that has nothing to do with the internet, because it’s about whether a decades old legal precedent about whether law enforcement needs a warrant to check records of who phoned who should be changed?

  82. 82.

    chopper

    @Cacti:

    i doubt that the court of appeals or the scotus would find that current metadata is so fundamentally different that it would distinguish over smith and they’d overturn it.

  83. 83.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @max:

    Generally, when Americans send each other mail, they expect it to be private. (Backed by the laws of Congress.) In practice, you can pretty much rip open anyone’s mail anytime you feel like – but that doing so means the stuff doesn’t get to used as be evidence, unless you have a warrant.

    This would be a good example if the case being discussed involved reading the contents of e-mail. It does not. The case involves metadata. If you want to make the comparison to snail mail procedures, you’ve got to talk about mail cover surveillance, which is legal.

  84. 84.

    Stillwater

    I guess I’m just confused about all this, but I still retain the belief that an argument needs to be made that government has a right to collect, collate, store and act on information individuals voluntarily present in communications conducted via private channels.

    The distinction between public and private is, in one very real sense, a distinction between governmental and non-governmental.

  85. 85.

    Joey Giraud

    @Cassidy:

    We know what a police state looks like. We have documented history of the terror that is unleashed in its citizens.

    You seem to think that blood being coughed up *is* the cancer.

    The cancer isn’t the terror, the cancer is the regime that we already have and that you seem to be arguing isn’t a problem.

    You’re too focused on the symptoms.

  88. 88.

    Joey Giraud

    @Cassidy:

    That’s lame, Cassidy.

    I don’t ever expect you to agree with anything you don’t already think. We’ve already established that you’re impenetrable and obtuse.

  89. 89.

    Stillwater

    @Joey Giraud: Hey, she said that there might be a valid point behind all the petulance. I think that means she’s amenable to the view, myself. She just has a thing for childish petulance, knowwhatImean?

  90. 90.

    Cassidy

    @Joey Giraud: It’s lame to choose to disengage from someone who describes the modern US as a regime and that it’s a police state? Sorry, not buying it. What’s lame is that your so privileged and entitled that you can type critical comments on a blog about how oppressed you are. No. I’m not going to believe in your delusional stupidity or entertain it as an equal opinion. It’s uneducated, and I’m sure certain peoples of various ethnic backgrounds would find it offensive and/or laughable.

  93. 93.

    Joey Giraud

    @Cassidy:

    I get it; you don’t and won’t get it.

    You’re deluding yourself into seeing my comments as a petty personal complaint. Fail. I’m not oppressed by our police state, excepting the handful of times I’ve been forced to eat dirt by cops for the crime of walking around my own damn hood. ( post-911, some shut-in thought my coffee cup was a gun and called the cops. )

    But that’s just a “white boys” sample of the police
    state endured by millions of your free Americans every day. Anyone with the least bit of curiosity ( not you for sure, ) can find a dozen stories a week of far worse police-state abuses.

    You’re also failing at the disengaging thing. I would welcome it, so please proceed.

  96. 96.

    pagodat

    Regardless of the legal merits, the ruling reads hilariously like Steven den Beste with a full head of steam in 2002. The first two sentences alone read like warblogger garbage that Instapundit would pull quote and heh-indeed back then. He even whipped out “seventh century milieu”!

  97. 97.

    burnspbesq

    @pagodat:

    Regardless of the legal merits, the ruling reads hilariously like Steven den Beste with a full head of steam in 2002.

    Agreed. That was laid on pretty thick. But it’s not necessary to the analysis, in which I’m still having trouble finding major holes.

  99. 99.

    mclaren

    But of course. In post-legal America, every atrocity is now legal.

    If Barack Obama raped a baby on the White House steps, the Supreme Court would declare it legal — and Eric Holder would give a press conference explaining that this was the new definition of “due process.”

  102. 102.

    Joey Giraud

    @chopper:

    No. “Petulant”

    childishly sulky or bad-tempered.

    is just snark.

    Defacing a website is a kind of graffiti, standard civil disobedience in this case.

  103. 103.

    Joey Giraud

    @Cassidy:

    Heh. Funny guy.

    You’re ex-military, right? I know so many ex-military guys who feel like their years in uniform make them the most savvy and educated citizens imaginable.

    It’s a kind of Dunning Kruger effect.

  105. 105.

    mclaren

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The men in the white coats are coming to take you away.

    “Welcome to post-legal America,” Noam Chomsky, tomdispatch.com, 23 July 2012.

    One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, “style” and even mental health of those who challenge them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals. In the US, those who take even the tiniest steps outside of political convention are instantly decreed “crazy”…

    This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society’s most powerful factions and their institutions. Nixon White House officials sought to steal the files from Daniel Ellsberg’s psychoanalyst’s office precisely because they knew they could best discredit his disclosures with irrelevant attacks on his psyche. Identically, the New York Times and partisan Obama supporters have led the way in depicting both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange as mentally unstable outcasts with serious personality deficiencies.

    Source: “How Noam Chomsky Is Discussed,” Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 23 March 2013.

  106. 106.

    chopper

    @Joey Giraud:

    lol yes. defacing someone’s wikipedia entry to call them a ‘scumbag’ because you don’t like their court decision isn’t childishly sulky or bad-tempered. not at all.

  108. 108.

    Joey Giraud

    @chopper:

    You’re welcome to describe them anyway you like. It’s a free country, as long as you’re hating on the politically correct people.

  112. 112.

    mclaren

    @Joey Giraud:

    That Chomsky quote will fly right over the heads of the regulars here who need to understand it the most.

    “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” — Winston Churchill

  113. 113.

    Joey Giraud

    @chopper:

    Figure that means you’re black, and had some injustice put on you, which sucks.

    America’s police state isn’t at the point where enough people care to make graffiti effective. Defacing a website probably does seem petulant to some. Not to me, at least that particular judge’s website. It’s a pretty mild form of dissent, in the big picture. I’m glad there are citizens who care enough about the issue to risk criminal charges.

    And I don’t agree that it’s counter-productive, even if it isn’t particularly productive.

  114. 114.

    Joey Giraud

    @mclaren:

    Well that’s certainly different. A very stirring quote, but hardly rare wisdom. Something you could always get 90% of people to agree with.

  115. 115.

    chopper

    @Joey Giraud:

    no, I’m white. I was self-hating so they put me in solitary.

    ‘Risk criminal charges’? Over fucking with a guy’s Wikipedia page? You need to get outside more. I wish I could join you but I openly hated on Protestantism and got thrown back in prison.

  116. 116.

    chopper

    @mclaren:

    I do love that quote, except that it always seems to be coughed up by people who think when he said ‘fight’ he meant ‘bitch on the Internet’.

  117. 117.

    chopper

    and of course Churchill thought it was cool to gas ‘uncivilized’ Arabs, so his definition of ‘fight for what’s right’ may differ from y’all’s.

  118. 118.

    Cervantes

    Charles Pierce:

    Let us congratulate U.S. District Judge William Pauley III. It cannot be easy issuing an important ruling while hiding under your bed.

  120. 120.

    LT

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think she’s saying that in the world today we have to give all sorts of information to everybody in order to do anything, so the whole “no reasonable expectation of privacy” argument is no longer valid.

    Wow. Are BJ front pagers actually and honestly this stupid?

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