Church of God News

COGwriter

A federal appeals court in the USA finally deemed NSA blanket telephone surveillance illegal:

May 7, 2015

A U.S. appeals court in New York ruled Thursday that the clandestine National Security Agency’s massive collection of phone records of Americans is illegal, far exceeding the scope of what Congress authorized.

“Congress cannot reasonably be said to have ratified a progam of which many members of Congress – and all members of the public – were not aware,” a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 97-page opinion.

The decision came in a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contesting the NSA’s collection of what the spy agency calls “metadata” — millions of records of phone calls, including the numbers called and the times the calls were made, although not the content of the calls.  The surveillance was unknown to almost all Americans until two years ago when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked a trove of documents about NSA spying before he fled overseas, eventually to asylum in Russia.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan stopped short of ruling on the constitutionality of NSA’s phone data collection, but it said the spying went far beyond what Congress authorized. It said the laws used by the government to justify the spying “have never been interpreted to authorize anything appoaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance” the NSA conducted.

“In light of the asserted national security interests at stake, we deem it prudent to pause to allow an opportunity for debate in Congress that may (or may not) profoundly alter the legal landscape,” the opinion written by Circuit Judge Gerald Lynch said.

“If Congress decides to authorize the collection of the data desired by the government under conditions identical to those now in place, the program will continue in the future under that authorization,” the ruling said. “If Congress decides to institute a substantially modified program, the constitutional issues will certainly differ considerably from those currently raised.”

The ruling said the government does not even claim that the records it collected are relevant to any specific ongoing terrorism investigation, only that “there might at some future point be a need or desire to search them in connection with a hypothetical future inquiry.”

The decision overturned a lower court ruling saying the surveillance is legal. But the appellate court declined to issue an injunction to halt the NSA surveillance, saying it would have little effect.

“This appellate court ruling is a historic breakthrough, because it shows the FISA court got it wrong, disastrously wrong, and will continue to get it wrong unless it is fundamentally reformed,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) told VOA.

“For the FISA court to make such a serious, dangerous error shows the need for fundamental, far-reaching reform in the entire FISA system, including an advocate to protect constitutional liberties that were harmed and endangered by the FISA court,” he added.

Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana) disagrees, telling VOA “Coupled with this (decision) is the proclamation by ISIS that they have a significant number of people embedded in America, and there are more terrorist attacks to come. So, watch out. This (bulk data collection) program helps us thwart those terrorist attacks. It has done so and we need to have it continue to do so.”

Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) expects the high court to reverse the decision.

“I think the Supreme Court will reverse that,” he told VOA. “Our ability to protect ourselves is to be able to have immediate access (to information), without having a delay to go through the court proceedings to get the phone records to see who has been talking to whom.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Thursday that the Department of Justice is “reviewing that decision.” http://www.voanews.com/content/us-appeals-court-finds-nsa-phone-record-gathering-excessive/2753756.html

Many credit/blame Edward Snowden for letting Americans know that this had been going on:

May 7, 2015

Edward Snowden hasn’t had his day in court, but he’s already finding some vindication in the U.S. judicial system.

A U.S. appeals court’s ruling on Thursday that bulk collection of telephone metadata by the National Security Agency is illegal has given fresh hope to supporters of the former government contractor, who say the judgment proves he was right to reveal the program. Some argue it’s another reason the 31-year-old should be allowed to return to the United States without fear of prosecution. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/edward-snowden-nsa-court-ruling-telephone-records-117733.html#ixzz3ZUcY5aFh

May 7, 2015

On 6 June 2013, the Guardian published a secret US court order against the phone company Verizon, ordering it on an “ongoing, daily basis” to hand over the call records of its millions of US customers to the NSA – just one of numerous orders enabling the government’s highly secret domestic mass surveillance program. Just days later the world learned the identity of the whistleblower who made the order public: Edward Snowden.

Now, almost two years later, a US court has vindicated Snowden’s decision, ruling that the bulk surveillance program went beyond what the law underpinning it allowed: the US government used section 215 of the Patriot Act to justify the program. A US court of appeals has ruled the law does not allow for a program so broad. In short, one of the NSA’s most famous and controversial surveillance programs has no legal basis.

Of Snowden and the NSA, only one has so far been found to have acted unlawfully – and it’s not Snowden.  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/07/edward-snowden-whistleblower-nsa-bulk-surveillance-illegal

Related to the Snowden leaks of espionage of Europe, in Hard Choices, on page 244 Hillary Clinton blames Edward Snowden for what he did, along with Russia for allowing him to stay there, without apologizing for Obama Administration policies, intrusions, and practices along those lines.  While I do not believe Edward Snowden should have violated certain pledges, I see more problems with government surveillance than people like Hillary Clinton seem to.

Many in the government of the United States simply do not believe that anyone has privacy rights on the the telephone nor the internet.

This is not the first time any governmental body in the USA has declared NSA actions as illegal (see NSA’s practices deemed illegal by a federal government agency), but it is the highest legal body in the USA to do so related to the Snowden leaks.  Various parts of Europe have indicated that aspects of USA espionage are illegal.  In my view, part of the public justification that the European Beast power will give for taking over the USA is that the USA engaged in illegal activities, such as blanket espionage, violating trade agreements, and getting militarily involved in places outside its borders.

Getting back to NSA actions, the Bible warns that sometimes matters done in secret can have bad consequences:

1 Hear my voice, O God, in my meditation;
Preserve my life from fear of the enemy.
2 Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,
From the rebellion of the workers of iniquity,
3 Who sharpen their tongue like a sword,
And bend their bows to shoot their arrows — bitter words,
4 That they may shoot in secret at the blameless;
Suddenly they shoot at him and do not fear.

5 They encourage themselves in an evil matter;
They talk of laying snares secretly;
They say, “Who will see them?”
6 They devise iniquities:
“We have perfected a shrewd scheme.”
Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep. (Psalms 64:1-6)

And while you might think that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from surveillance, consider that many in the government of the USA consider that not supporting homosexual marriages, etc. are extremist. I also saw someone once on a documentary that stated that people who believed in the millennium could not be trusted and should be considered as potential terrorists.  The fact that we in the Continuing Church of God would be considered pacifists, does not change the fact that since we hold to millennial and other biblical views that we will not be improperly classified by government employees with various agendas.

Having biblical views are becoming more problematic in the USA.

Notice also the following prophecy:

13 Therefore the prudent keep silent at that time, For it is an evil time.  (Amos 5:13)

The above indicates that even those that are doing nothing wrong will need to be silent at the coming evil time.

Notice also another prophecy:

11 “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord God,
“That I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine of bread,
Nor a thirst for water,
But of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 They shall wander from sea to sea,
And from north to east;
They shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
But shall not find it. (Amos 8:11-12)

God is going to allow humanity to stop people from finding various biblical truths for a time–many are starting to take steps related to that already (watch also Famine of the Word?).

Basically, the time will come when teaching various biblical truths will be publicly stopped (except that the two witnesses will not be stopped).

Government surveillance that the USA has done, and has at least partially taught the Europeans to do, may well be factors that hasten the time for the coming famine of the word.

Whether or not the US Supreme Court will back this Court of Appeals remains to be seen.  But already, repercussions of NSA telephone surveillance has affected Europe, and this will not be truly reversed over there.

Some items of possibly related interest may include:

Tweet

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2015 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Prophecy.

• Edward Snowden says NSA surveillance makes Americans less safe
• NSA admits some of its surveillance while massive data collection facility is being built; Russian Orthodox Archpriest gives his views of what USA is doing
• NSA found repeatedly violating privacy rules, revealed documents black-out reason why all American telephone records were collected
• BibleNewsProphecy: Are the Snowden NSA leaks leading to the destruction of the USA?
• Group petitions Supreme Court to stop some of NSA’s surveillance; Snowden comments revealed.
• NSA’s practices deemed illegal by a federal government agency
• Federal judge rules against some of NSA’s data collection
• NSA illegally and unconstitutionally collected data on US residents
• NSA compiled hundreds of reports on Germany’s Angela Merkel
• Wikimedia suing NSA for its ‘upstream’ surveillance