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searchingforknowledge:

sinidentidades:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that human rights groups do not have standing to sue the government over its warrantless wiretapping program because they have no proof that the wiretapping has harmed them.

The vote was split 5-4 along partisan lines, with the conservative majority supporting the Obama administration’s argument that the FISA Amendments Act was above reproach in this case because the harms were “speculative,” and not “actual.”

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing in the dissent (PDF), explained: “In my view, this harm is not ‘speculative.’ Indeed it is as likely to take place as most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen. This Court has often found the occurrence of similar future events sufficiently certain to support standing.”

Roving, warrantless wiretaps were authorized by President George W. Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, turning the National Security Agency into the nation’s spy machine. Whistleblowers allege that every electronic communication coming into and out of the U.S. is automatically monitored and flagged for keywords, but the NSA always denies that it operates within the U.S.

“It’s a disturbing decision,” American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. “The FISA Amendments Act is a sweeping surveillance statute with far-reaching implications for Americans’ privacy. This ruling insulates the statute from meaningful judicial review and leaves Americans’ privacy rights to the mercy of the political branches.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights was similarly dismayed. “The Court’s decision, while narrow, puts up unnecessary and technical hurdles to challenging the legality of this controversial program,” a prepared statement said. “The opinion of the four dissenting justices reflects a better understanding of the judiciary’s role in questioning and checking the legality of Executive Branch surveillance practices.”

Then-Senator Barack Obama initially opposed the FISA Amendments Act, but ultimately voted for it in 2008, which granted immunity to the outgoing administration and telecommunications companies that aided their legally questionable spying operations. He signed a five-year extension to that act as president at the end of 2012.

this is such BULLSHIT reasoning that I stare at the Supreme Court in utter disbelief

Wow!

The famine that catapulted Bob Geldof’s Band Aid to prominence had more to do with Ethiopian government policy to withhold food shipments to rebel areas than the weather and to spend nearly half of its gross domestic product on its military. Aid became a tool of the government’s counter-insurgency strategy, being left to rot or distributed according to political objectives (“Stimulus for an entire continent – and Tony Blair deserves the credit”, News Commentary).

The same political issues shape African development choices today and these, not external activism on aid, are key to understanding the continent’s future trajectory. Geldof still seems to battle to understand that African development solutions, like the problems, are principally domestic, and also have to be founded in sustainable business logic, not political gestures or NGO activism.

“Aid,” he wrote, “sent money into basic health, education and agriculture, providing stability at a fundamental community level and allowing stretched societies a moment to pause… while helping governments acquire the capacity they needed to govern.” The timing, he claims, was critical, since it was exactly at this moment the Chinese became interested in Africa and a digital take-off occurred. What aid had to do with Chinese investment and its demand for natural resources is beyond me and I suspect most other Africans.