Government To Release Hundreds of Documents On NSA Spying

Trailrunner7 writes "In response to a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Department of Justice is preparing to release a trove of documents related to the government's secret interpretation of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The declassified documents will include previously secret opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The decision by the Justice Department to release the documents is the second legal victory in recent weeks for the EFF related to the National Security Agency's intelligence collection programs. In August, the group won the release of a 2011 FISC opinion that revealed that the court ruled that some of the NSA's collection programs were illegal and unconstitutional. The newest decision will result in the release of hundreds of pages of documents related to the way the government has been interpreting Section 215, which is the measure upon which some of the NSA's surveillance programs are based. In a status report released Wednesday regarding the EFF's suit against the Department of Justice, attorneys for the government said that they will release the documents by Sept. 10."

Feeding Us What They Want Us To See

[Anonymous Coward]

They cannot be trusted. They'll only feed us what they want us to see and nothing more. They'll deny that they do much more, and even will tell us they've curtailed some efforts.

They are the government. They lie. They cannot be trusted.

Re:Yeah, that's the ticket

[Mitreya]

Drown 'em in paperwork.

No, that's not it at all.
EFF has to battle in court to receive secret interpretation of the law. That's not "paperwork", that's the law itself.

Re:It's the law!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah these motherfuckers lied to the congress, what makes us think they won't lie to everyone else?

Re:Americans too dumb anyway

[TWX]

Our government isn't oppressive. It generally doesn't have to be, as we're usually more than willful in our ability to distract ourselves. Think along the lines of Bread and Circuses and Brave New World. The "news" is reporting that some stupid socialite bimbo was all over some singer with a sexist song after some other singer bimbo got nearly naked on stage for her part of his performance. Other "news" is reporting on some stupid gal who had sex on camera with some stupid guy that had sex with some pathetic gal that has tested positive for HIV, and the only close-to-relevant part is that the original gal was engaging in sexual exchanges with a guy that wants to be mayor of a really big city.

We don't have to have an oppressive government; we're fat-and-happy to the point that we don't care what our government does as long as our big-screen TVs provide us with enough sensationalism to keep us occupied by the 24 hour "news" cycle.

The sad thing, really, is that I expect that the vast majority of people are so boring that there isn't even anything interesting to know about them by watching them.

Re:Is SELinux vulnerable?

[jhol13]

Could SELinux which was developed by the NSA be vulnerable to this sort of attack?

Yes, it could.

Could the NSA have a backdoor into Linux itself?

Yes, they have, as does Chinese, Vupen, etc. Whether to call them "backdoors" or "just a random security holes" is left as a philosophical discussion.

but could Linux itself be vulnerable to the attacks the NSA can launch on other platforms?

Yes.