Honestly, how do you people even bring yourselves to talk about these laws in the context of existing legal frameworks?
I'm not trying to be rude to you as much as I am express my frustration about what the government's doing, but look, nothing about this was particularly legal (we can debate the legality of FISA warrants off-thread, I'm happy to).
Certainly any sort of whole-sale capturing of traffic or messages or pictures or calls could cause the government to be in possession of materials that they shouldn't, but that's really not saying a whole lot, now is it?
I don't even think about these gross violations of our Constitution to even be a "legal" matter. How can you? It's not like a court can rule against these laws. The ruling is just suppresssed.
I think the point is that "protecting the children" is one of the few things that are an easy fight politically. The rules over gathering data on children are fairly strict, and could be a fine technicality to enforce a moratorium on the wide surveillance. They may not be lawful, but bureaucracies are notorious for being susceptible to goofy policy enforcement. (One could joke they answer to a higher authority that way.)
Of course, they also have the option to say fear is worse, enact special complicated safeguards that filter out children, or any number of other weasel work-arounds. But it's something, at least.
Given that the NSA has been willing to violate the Constitution, which is literally the highest law of the land, what makes you think they care at all about a few pesky child protection rules?
It's like paying attention to the speed limit while mowing down pedestrians in your car.
First, who cares? Honestly, of all the things I'm upset about, pretty much the bottom of the list is "pictures from Tor get mirrored in an NSA facility". The "terrible" things about child porn come from it's production, distribution and sale. None of those things are happening by it getting picked up in a dragnet and put on a HD. No one's going to be motivated to stop the government over CP if they haven't over privacy.
Second, child porn is bad. But do we really have to take their bullshit strategy of "OHMHYGOD THE CHILDREN!?" when "OH MY GOD, ANY SENSE OF PRIVACY?" should suffice?
tltltl;dr: If a "legal technicality" were going to trip up the NSA, it ought to be the Fourth Amendment.
I completely agree that "the children" is a minor blip in the entire program, but it is a blip that has a lot of emotional response attached to it.
I again agree that current laws can't even compare to something of this scale. But laws about minors and their entrapment or protection might be enough to waken the laymen on this apparent abuse of power.
I'm not trying to be rude to you as much as I am express my frustration about what the government's doing, but look, nothing about this was particularly legal (we can debate the legality of FISA warrants off-thread, I'm happy to).
Certainly any sort of whole-sale capturing of traffic or messages or pictures or calls could cause the government to be in possession of materials that they shouldn't, but that's really not saying a whole lot, now is it?
I don't even think about these gross violations of our Constitution to even be a "legal" matter. How can you? It's not like a court can rule against these laws. The ruling is just suppresssed.