[rayiner]

Couldn't they pick a more sympathetic guy to talk about:

"Mr. Pickering said that although he was arrested two dozen times for acts of civil disobedience and convicted of a handful of misdemeanors, he was never involved in the arson attacks the Earth Liberation Front carried out."

Gee, this guy was a member of a group that conducted arson attacks and the government is keeping track of the mail he gives to the government to deliver? I'm shocked, really...

That said, this is a great article, and the second page gives a good description of what I think is the legal theory behind the NSA programs:

1) Don't need a warrant to keep track of meta-data (whatever is readable on the outside of the mail).

2) Don't need a warrant to access contents (opening the mail) in foreign intelligence cases (i.e. where the target is a non-U.S. person).

3) Need a warrant to access contents otherwise.

[EliAndrewC]

> Couldn't they pick a more sympathetic guy to talk about

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken

[sneak]

This is way better than all the explanations I've been able to come up with for people about why it's important to defend weev.

[dllthomas]

Mencken had a way with words, for sure.

[ceol]

That might be telling you that there isn't a good reason to do so.

[sneak]

Oh, I had good ones, and still do: things about unpopular speech being the canary in the coal mine, things like that. It's much the same explanation.

Mencken is just a lot more eloquent than I was describing it, though.

[mpyne]

That's a great explanation for why CFAA needs reformed and weev's sentenced substantially reduced to match the 'crime'. But he still dun goofed.

[sneak]

I don't just think his sentencing was improper, I don't believe that there was any criminal wrongdoing by anyone at any point. He did nothing criminal, and neither did ATT.

[unclebucknasty]

I've seldom seen a better timed or more appropriate quote offered in reply.

[GigabyteCoin]

I think it's more the fact that he is now considered a free man, but still being spied on, which irks us all.

[rayiner]

Is it "spying" for the government to remember information that he voluntary told to the government?

[GigabyteCoin]

Did you even read the article? The government is actively sifting through his mail, more than 10 years after he was considered to be a threat... and a hippy environmentalist threat at that...

[rayiner]

There are environmentalists and there are arsonists. His organization was the latter.

And guess what: the government has to "sift through your mail" to deliver it. All they're doing with him is remembering what they saw. Because he belonged to an organization that burned shit down.

[ceol]

I feel this is what a lot of people forget -- or ignore -- when they come on HN to proselytize for this week's armchair activist crusade. 99% of the time, this shit is used to stop legitimately dangerous people. It's manned by people who aren't out to ruin your life; they just want to live theirs with as little shit to worry about as possible.

Reddit, HN, and the like are collectively patting themselves on the back and talking about revolution as though they're going to do anything other than click those little arrow icons next to posts. The third top comment here is talking about DDoSing the post office -- with absolutely no hint of irony. It's ridiculous.

[GigabyteCoin]

This is the version of "sift through" that I was referring to: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/sift+through

>to examine all parts of something

They weren't just reading the address and sending the domestic mail on it's way, as everyone expects they do.

[eli]

Who is "they"? He's the one who, somewhat hilariously, got a note about snooping his messages in his mailbox.