re: #276 Justanotherhuman

Something can be deemed legal without it being constitutional. You can pass a law saying anything really, but that’s not the final arbiter in the United States. And I do not believe the laws would pass constitutional muster.

And it was a very neat trick used by the government to keep anyone from challenging the constitutionality of the laws. Because the entire acts were considered state secrets, no one could find out information to find out exactly what was being done. After all, if you can’t prove you were affected, then you can’t challenge the law.

So now we know what’s going on. but no one can challenge the laws. after all, it’s still confidential, and as such you can’t show standing to file suit.

More importantly, if no one knows what you’re doing, how can anyone raise a voice to argue against it, Up until snowden, anyone who talked about how the NSA was spying on everyone and doing all sorts of stuff, were considered tinfoil hat nutters who followed art bell or something. No one believed, because no one *wanted* to believe it.

I’m sure foreign governments are going to get over what the US was doing, particularly if they were doing it back. That’s a red herring. The only thing embarrassing about our spying, was we got outed. There’s going to be no real long term damage, unless we were well past what is considered acceptable behavior by other foreign governments.