"Surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists. Existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet and cell phones." Oct. 25, 2001
How would you know, the would be terrorists, the would be plans, the would be targets, if you will not do the surveillance? And how did you know it is being used to non-terrorist? Any complaint yet from a US citizen about this? Anyone?
Uh, yeah. They generally do. If you're going to play the "How do they have the time to read all those bills" which I saw the GOP play with Obamacare, it's called a staff which exists and works long hours for a reason.
84% of wiretaps in 2010 cited "illegal drugs" as the investigation. And yeah...there have been complaints. E.g., from those unpatriotic US soldiers overseas, making naughty talk with their wives back home. I'm really not interested in getting dragged too deep into this thread - I'm worn out arguing about this here. But these are off the top of my head...
I would argue, at this point, they know more than you or I or Snowden.. That information is classified and affects national security. Unless you believe government should have no secrets at all, then I don't see why you'd expect them to share any of that in detail. I'm not claiming anything one way or another here - but a lot of people seem to be taking Snowden and Glenn Greenwald's opinions as absolute fact without really knowing anything about the actual laws. I find people like Ron Wyden's reactions the most interesting. He's one of my most respected Senators, but throwing a fit and saying he knew about this a year ago and is angry as all hell is interesting. He said he couldn't share any of the information, which is true. But I wonder if he ever bothered offering a bill that simply outlined what government can or can't do in regards to civil liberties? If this stuff is so offensive, he could have gotten a decent amount of support and at least cleared up the law without ever having to reveal classified information.
Well apparently the executive has secret interpretations of the law which can't be tested in real courts because of "national security". Few if any of our elected Congress people know about these interpretations. So for the most part Congress's opinion or knowledge about what is going on is not that good. Bottom line whether one is content with recording all communications in the US and the world under secret rulings and supervision by only a secret court without regular judicial review.
My reaction was based off of Feinstein's response, where she admitted that she didn't fully know to what ends the NSA was using the subpoena'd info. Also, Obama has followed the trends of other presidents and increased the blanket of state secrets to the most banal things if only to put a run around to the FOIA. I simply don't trust what they consider classified if they can't or won't show the due diligence to follow the spirit of the law.
Why yes. I don't think Shia Labeouf is a terrorist, first hand eyewitness complaining after being creeped out by literally hearing his phone calls from years earlier. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3ux1hpLvqMw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Journalist in US surveillance case: More to come Associated Press – 21 hrs ago http://news.yahoo.com/journalist-us-surveillance-case-more-come-050921834.html
Former NSA Employee Leaked Surveillance Details Prior to Snowden http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/0...leaked-surveillance-details-prior-to-snowden/ Why didn’t the prior revelations cause as much controversy? On the heels of revelations that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone and internet data of millions of Americans as part of a controversial surveillance program, the identity of the source who leaked that information was unveiled Sunday as 29-year old Edward Snowden, a Booz Allen Hamilton defense contractor working at the NSA. But a 2012 interview that’s recently resurfaced has revealed the NSA’s activities had already been leaked by another former NSA employee. From Business Insider:http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowdens-whistleblower-binney-2013-6 The interview with Bill Binney is interesting because it does, in fact, parallel much of what is revealed in the interview with Edward Snowden. Both interviews were directed and produced by Laura Poitras. Binney told the New Yorker in 2011 that he believed a program he had created, called ThinThread, to streamline the process of sifting through the overwhelming amounts of data the agency was collecting, had been misused. It was intended for use in foreign surveillance operations, but was ultimately also used domestically as a component in the Stellar Wind program. In statements as a panelist at the DEFCON hacker conference in 2012, Binney elaborated on the original intent of the programs he created, while disputing earlier claims by NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander that the agency does not collect files on Americans. In listening to Binney’s entire statements during that panel, the surveillance activities he described are strikingly similar to those recently revealed by Snowden. Binney, who resigned from his job at the NSA in 2001, first came into the public eye during the case of Thomas Drake, another former NSA official, who was prosecuted for revealing much of the same information to a Baltimore Sun reporter. Drake favored Binney’s ThinThread program over a competing contractor product called TrailBlazer, the latter of which Drake and others believed was too costly and lacked the safeguards of ThinThread. But TrailBlazer also exposed the growing scale of the agency’s surveillance reach. From the Washington Post in 2011:http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...sselyn-radack-nsa-mismanagement-espionage-act Drake was initially charged in relation to leaking classified information and a violation of the Espionage Act, but prosecutors ultimately dropped all the charges but one, and Drake plead guilty to a misdemeanor of exceeding authorized use of a computer. Binney has continued to speak publicly about the programs since then, having appeared with media outlets on both political extremes, including Glenn Beck and Democracy Now. The accounts of Bill Binney and Thomas Drake brought to light the scope and scale of the NSA’s surveillance activities, long before Edward Snowden came forward. Much like the NSA activities described in both Binney’s and Snowden’s interviews with Laura Poitras, their justification for bringing the information to the public is similar as well. From Binney’s interview:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html From Snowden’s interview:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance This most recent leak of classified intelligence documents has many comparing Snowden to Bradley Manning, the Army private who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks in 2010. But Snowden, while a supporter of Manning, says his own case is different. With Manning’s trial having begun just this past week, attempts to tie in the two narratives haven’t gone unnoticed. Wikileaks has been driving that narrative, and outlets like Russia Today, among others, are calling Snowden “Manning 2.0.” Interestingly, one of the last frames in Laura Poitras’ video interview with Bill Binney thanks, among others, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange.
Obama’s Director Of National Intelligence Jokes About Reading Americans Emails… More of that extreme arrogance we’ve come to expect from the Obama regime. Via GovExec:http://www.govexec.com/federal-news...s-and-spying-news-bombshell/64598/?oref=river
Former NSA Chief: The Agency Has ‘Very Good Idea’ Which Secrets Snowden Swiped http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/06/former-nsa-boss-likely-scope-snowden-leak.php?ref=fpb
Nine Companies Tied to PRISM, Obama Will Be Smacked With Class-Action Lawsuit Wednesday AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and Youtube will be named in the suit, attorney says http://www.usnews.com/news/newsgram...e-smacked-with-class-action-lawsuit-wednesday
These oaths are not one way. They have a basis, a foundation. It's an agreement, i.e.: I will keep my oath if you keep your oath to the American people to act in their best interests. If that oath to the American people is broken, the "contract" is void and you no longer have to keep that oath. If there is no suitable authority to determine whether that contract is void, then it is fair enough that you make that judgement based upon your access to key information which could demonstrate compliance or non compliance with that oath. When Snowden agreed to keep secrets secret, he thought he was doing it for an entirely different person, despite what would amount to a fair amount of due dilligence on his employer. Once he discovered that his employer is a fraud, he obviously no longer felt compelled to keep those secrets. It's funny because the first response of these maniacal conservatives would be: why don't you go to another country and F off then?!?! That's just what he did, and no he's a coward. So really the only reasonable position to those conservatives is: shut up, go to jail, or be shamefully exiled, regardless of any crimes committed by your employer. No one on this board is better equipped than me to tell you how absurd this line of thinking is. Once upon a time, the people in America swore an oath to the British. I guess they should have kept those oaths huh? lol The left wing shouldn't get off easy either. Look at this insane amount of hypocrisy from the left, who I've seen for years claim that they stick to principled positions whereas they claim the right takes positions based purely on politics: I think I'm going to stop calling it the left, and start calling it the 'slightly less right' party. Appalling.
