Can You Hear Me Now?
Not living in the past: The collection and retention of the phone call “metadata” of all Americans likely violates the Constitution, Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon said yesterday in a preliminary ruling in a case challenging the NSA brought by conservative Larry Klayman. Leon rejected a 1979 precedent, saying, ““Put simply, people in 2013 have an entirely different relationship with phones than they did 34 years ago,” he wrote. “Records that once would have revealed a few scattered tiles of information about a person now reveal an entire mosaic — a vibrant and constantly updating picture of the person’s life.”
Edward Snowden issued a statement through Glenn Greenwald praising Leon’s ruling:
“I acted on my belief that the N.S.A.’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. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”
Amy Davidson of The New Yorker zeros in on Judge Leon’s Dominos effect. That is, as part of his ruling, he noted if a person the NSA believed reasonably might have something to do with terrorism calls or receives calls from 100 numbers, including a Domino’s Pizza shop, the “three-hop” rule would lead the NSA to capturing millions of records by the third hop.
Politico rounds up the responses to Leon’s ruling from Members of Congress.
Edward Snowden has written an open letter to the people of Brazil, offering his help in investigating US spying on them in exchange for asylum. Bizarrely, CNN reports this as an “offer to spy” for Brazil.
In a phone call conversation in October, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told President Barack Obama, “This is like the Stasi,” speaking of the NSA’s activities, the New York Times reports.
An anonymous NSA source reached out to Forbes’ Andy Greenberg to offer some supportive comments about Edward Snowden, including: “That kid was a genius among geniuses.”
In other news around the web:
Nancy Scola has a delightfully intimate portrait of Revolution Messaging and its chief impresario, Scott Goodstein, in the December issue of Washingtonian. Goodstein is thankfully recovered from a spring motorcycle accident and making trouble with clients ranging from Americans for Responsible Solutions to Ultraviolet and the AFL-CIO.
Want to know how much money political technology and targeting vendors made from the 2012 presidential campaigns? Lee Aitken explains in the Atlantic why “vague and lax” campaign disclosure laws make that impossible.
The Internet Archive just unveiled a fascinating data visualization built on top of its huge stash of 400,000 hours of U.S. television news. Kalev Leetaru, a scholar working with the archive, built algorithms that scanned the closed caption text of each broadcast looking for place names anywhere in the world, and then checked the surrounding discussion to disambiguate common place names (for example, to distinguish Springfield, IL from Springfield, MA). The resulting map and 4-year video animation offers a window into the “geography of American television news, beginning to reveal which areas received outsized attention and which are neglected.” Wow.
NY State Senator Liz Krueger, a target of grass-roots lobbying by Peers.org members concerned about their Airbnb rentals, pushes back on their efforts, saying they are being misinformed by Peers and don’t understand the illegal hotel law.
The founder of Airbnb Nathan Blecharcyzk addresses the investigation of his company by NY’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, saying that “With the Attorney General in New York we see eye-to-eye on a lot of facts. They’re concerned about a few users that are quite large that have over 100 properties. We understand you may not want users with that many properties on our service. He asked for data not just on those users but all users. We didn’t think that was appropriate.”
Facebook just launched a “Donate” button for charities to put on their pages. Carmel Deamicis of PandoDaily explains why most nonprofits aren’t thrilled by the gesture.
Here’s my update on the latest incarnation of Obama’s “Organizing for America.”
Senator Harry Reid tweets that: “My new website has a tool that will allow you track [sic] my voting record. Scroll to the bottom of the home page: reid.senate.gov.” Yes, this is 2013 and most Members of Congress still do not make it easy for their constituents to see their voting records.