Robbie Thomas
Blast from the Past: To the NSA: No, You Can’t.
Author’s Note: In the post titled “An E-Mail from Hubpages,” I said that Hubpages would be deleting my articles. I’m bringing one out of three (or possibly four) to this site before they pull the plug entirely. I went to Hubpages.com, and it gave me a blank white screen saying “this page doesn’t exist.” But I was able to log in. Enjoy this article I wrote in 2013.
For starters, the NSA has been dealt a legal punch in the face with U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruling that the NSA’s own phone data collection was unconstitutional. However, Leon gave the ruling an additional “pending appeal,” which gives the United States government time to appeal it. This has been the first significant defeat for the NSA since Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing. Snowden himself had made statements about the ruling as he sought asylum in Brazil. He said late Monday, “I acted on my belief that the NSA’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts.”
The person who led the courtroom fight against the NSA is Lawyer and Activist Larry Klayman. Klayman is a conservative lawyer who doubles as a watchdog. He is the founder of Judicial Watch. Klayman is not a fan of Obama.
But despite Klayman’s serious emphasis on being a watchdog, he does have tech company leaders agreeing with him (and going against the NSA, that is). One particular company opposed to what the NSA is doing is Google Executive Eric Schmidt. Although Mr. Schmidt may not like what the NSA does, his company does the same thing: collects information, not for security purposes but for advertising. If you surf Google for a while looking for the exact value of your poorly maintained baseball cards with almost every one of them having a rip on them, or coffee stains on the others, you’ll soon see ads such as: “We will buy your crappy baseball cards! TOP DOLLAR!”
Opposed to something like this:
‘We know those baseball cards of yours are really coded messages to your terrorist friends. We’re watching you, bitch.’
Indeed, Google wasn’t the only one that met with the President. Apple, Yahoo, Twitter, and about ten other companies sat with Obama, Biden, and the staff. Almost twenty-four hours later, a 300-page report known as the NSA review panel surfaced. According to pages 4 and 5, the report basically started in August 2013. However, one can say that President Obama doesn’t have time to read all 300 pages of this report. However, the report’s primary concern is limiting the NSA’s activities. It seems that Edward Snowden’s efforts are turning around for him.
Russia is also jumping on the NSA bandwagon, but in a different way. According to this article on Russia Today, the Russian government states that it has obtained a document in which the U.S. Government asks Norway’s intelligence service to keep an eye on Russia.
In conclusion, with the help of the top tech execs, people in general are not into the NSA’s doing with thanks to Edward Snowden, and also our friend Larry Klayman (who also isn’t a fan of Don Lemon); there has been some force on Obama to look into putting limits on what the NSA can do.