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You mean like the Associated Press claiming "There are no government rules dictating how tanks [oil storage] are designed." ?

https://www.apnews.com/0485b3c...

Where's the fact checking in that article?

It's telling that the issue is trying to be framed as one about the intelligence agencies revealing U.S. citizens whose conversations were intercepted as part of legitimate intelligence gathering rather than the fact of collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign government.

We know for an absolute fact Russia was trying to, and successfully did, influence our election. The Senate committee, the House committee and the intelligence services all agree on that unassailable fact.

Yet instead of being concerned or even upset at this interference, Nunes is trying to deflect from this fact to one of, "But people's names were revealed!", as if trying to figure out who was colluding with Russia is a bad thing.

Another thing which is even more disturbing is the continued insistence, and outright denial, by the con artist that Russia either did anything during the campaign, or if they did, that they did anything wrong. This raises the very real question of why the con artist is trying to protect Russia? Why has he abjectly refused to say a single bad word about that country despite it deliberately bombing hospitals in Syria and coordinating the chemical weapon attack in Syria, not to mention its seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine, its invasion of Ukraine and its support for terrorist groups inside Ukraine? If this were Iran doing this the con artist would be bombing away, but because it's Russia, he lets them literally get away with murder.

Further, had Hillary Clinton won and these exact same facts come out, you can be absolutely sure Republicans would be laser focused on who did what and trying to pin the collusion on her. But when it comes to the con artist, they are doing what they can to deflect from the crimes and protect him. Hypocrisy at its best.

OK, let's try to avoid any "fake news." The French connection was just this - the French themselves said that there's no trace of Russian interference: https://www.apnews.com/fc570e4... I've heard a lot of "they will surely try it" but no other concrete accusation, just the U.S. presidential election. Regarding Brexit there was a report that Russia or China "may have" tried to do something, which is in my opinion fake news by itself - anyone "may have" tried something. What we know for sure is that the current UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson lied - "spread fake news" in current lingo - about the budgetary advantages of Brexit. Do you know of any other concrete examples?

So you think we should just ignore all of the massive amount of evidence from a dizzying array of sources, many of them independent and professional with no stake in the political world, just because you think it's all a gigantic sour grapes excuse argument?

The person you responded to stated very clearly the same thing most of us who are not leftists/progressives have been saying. SHOW US SOME EVIDENCE! What we have is a report based on 3rd party paid for by the DNC claiming "Russia" hacked the DNC. The FBI requested access to the servers to run a Federal investigation and were REFUSED!

Anonymously source claims are not evidence! For all we know there could be one person responsible for every single anonymous source. Read the statements on the record by Comey, Clapper, Obama, etc.. etc.. who all stated that the Election was not tampered with. Not 1 vote was changed, and according to them not one vote was cast illegally. (and we just had 12 Democrats indited for voter fraud, link so we know that issues exist, but no evidence that a R or Trump did anything illegal). We were promised an investigation into fraud, and I'm hoping it's either underway or will still be completed.

The sources in TFA are all biased sources. I don't see anything new here, just the same old Stalinist tactics we have seen since last July from the Democratic party and MSM. If you want to sway my opinion, start producing facts.

Like many others, I don't fall for appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, or ad hominem. I study facts!

I'm eagerly awaiting the Breitbart crowd roaring after this clear violation of national security law and document classification regulations:

= = = https://apnews.com/b1097747055...
  The outgoing White House also became concerned about the Trump team’s handling of classified information. After learning that highly sensitive documents from a secure room at the transition’s Washington headquarters were being copied and removed from the facility, = = =

Melania Trump did not come over on an H2B visa. She came over on a B1/B2 visitor visa and worked illegally. The H2B visa story is yet another alternate fact.

The wife of the GOP presidential nominee, who sometimes worked as a model under just her first name, has said through an attorney that she first came to the U.S. from Slovenia on Aug. 27, 1996, on a B1/B2 visitor visa and then obtained an H-1B work visa on Oct. 18, 1996.

The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between Sept. 10 and Oct. 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country. The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa.

So she was an illegal worker.

hasn't Florida Man been punished enough already?

"I need to get a (protective) bubble,"

PRISM (what part of it is eventually determined to be real), just like the old over-hyped PROMIS, are just analysis and coordination tools. A user interface.

It's the COLLECTION that matters. We must slap a collar and bell on the NSA... and introduce strong criminal penalties for corporations who knowingly participate in these taps, OR even fail to exercise due diligence in policing their infrastructure for the presence of 'unauthorized' taps.

Shut it all down and send 'em home. Let the folks at NSA do something worthwhile and productive like filling potholes.

Even straight real-time voice intercept is a well known capability, geezers among us will recall there was a time when taps required alligator clips and assistance of telephone company personnel. Popularity of telephone ESS and CALEA guidelines (thank you Bill Clinton, you dumb outlaw-all-encryption Clipper Chip dawg) began to streamline the process to put back doors in telephone switches.

Such backdoor tactics were necessary because even then the digital component of our voice backbone consisted of an incredible number of multiplexed constant bitrate channels that criss-crossed the country as a mesh. They were far too distributed and numerous to present the possibility of 'complete intercept'.

On a clear day you actually could hear a pin drop too. Bell Standard Practices. Bless 'em, may they rest in peace.

Then codecs happened, packetization happened and IP routing happened. Fiber happened. Gigabit switching happened. Those constant bitrate links, both terrestrial and microwave, went the way of the horse and buggy.

Welcome to the Brave New World, where your voice is compressed to the point where speaker recognition is iffy, turkey garble when packets are delayed or lost.

And most importantly for the NSA who wants to slurp in domestic communications, it all passes through very few terrestrial interconnection points and the compression allows them to spool and store (via 'dark fiber' that has mysteriously come to life) in centralized locations. For-fuckin'-ever.

Since they listen afterwards and have captured every packet --- even the ones that did not arrive on time --- the NSA probably gets better voice quality than you do. How twisted is that??

Amazingly, the Associated Press is starting to get it,

AP: Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure: But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.

Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

The only silly fallacy tripping them up now is the prevailing theme that these taps are "only" placed at points of ingress and egress. A border thang, they's listenin' to foreigners, move along now.

Since the days not so long ago when as much traffic passed through satellite earth stations as did undersea cables, NSA's collection and interception has brought them well into the geographical confines of the country. With a extremely high ratio of illegal domestic intercepts versus 'sanctioned' border-crossing communication.

This is an existential threat.

1. LYNCHPIN of warrantless spying: Hepting v. AT&T