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http://www.fas.org/irp/mystery/aurora.htm

Doesn't seem like that would be too hard to do. It might be something as simple as only storing the encryption key in volatile memory, so that when the batteries run out, the key evaporates. You're left with the hardware, but it won't handshake with the rest of the network or do anything else particularly useful.

Plus, if you're an adversary trying to avoid being killed by U.S. forces, picking up a U.S. radio and transmitting on it is probably unhealthy. As in, once detected, it could lead to serious HARM. (Obviously the AGM-88 is overkill for someone on a low-power radio, but conceptually you could do the same thing on a smaller scale; build some sort of micro-HARM that would home in on a low-power transmitter.)

I response to the HMS Dreadnought, one US Congressman suggested the USS Skeered of Nothing.

Question is, does it include the recent trend of outsourcing intelligence work ?

Um, yes, that's what this entire issue is about.

The blog that contains this article is called "The Spy Who Billed Me: Outsourcing the War on Terror", and the presentation itself is titled "Procuring the Future", and is entirely dedicated to contractors and contract acquisition, and the fact that the IC couldn't function or do its job without the variety of speciality contractors and services. The way the IC budget was "deduced" was by seeing dollars spent on contractors, and the knowledge that constituted "70%" of spending.

Yeah, the contract issue in general is one of concern, but, like all things, it's not simply "good" or "bad"; it has benefits, drawbacks, advantages, and problems, and the key is proper management of such resources. Keep in mind that all contractor issues aren't "outsourcing" in the way some like to think: it includes all manner of acquisition of capabilities and services, which also necessarily includes labor.

Yeah, that's no longer there.

It's now been posted by the Federation of American Scientists.

There are, however, a number of other contracting briefs and presentations posted here

MILITARY ASSISTANCE- (A) The President is authorized to direct the drawdown of defense articles from the stocks of the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training for such organizations.

Bold emphasis mine. The President was authorized to use materiel and personnel of the US Military to achieve the goals of the bill. In addition to military education and training. The intent may have been different, but the text of the bill is pretty unambiguous.

Also, note further that section 4(e)(1) takes the cost of military materiel and personnel out of the budget for the bill.

President Clinton's signing statement (an action which apparently is so evil to use, you even reference his use of signing statements) clarifies his position to support overthrow of Saddam, and to work through the US Security Council to see that happen. Which is exactly how President Bush executed the completion of the Iraq War - with approval of the UNSC.

1. My post was to remind, that no government is a friend of privacy.
2. You forgot about the infamous Clipper chip, and how Clinton's administration tried to make encryption, which did not provide for government's ability to decrypt illegal. From Clinton's 1993 directive:

   I do not intend to prevent the private sector from developing, or the government from approving, other microcircuits or algorithms that are equally effective in assuring both privacy and a secure key-escrow system [emphasys mine -mi].

Oh, I don't disagree that submarines could be designed to run at 50 knots (ricer subs?). However, from everything that I've read, there are two major issues that affect the designs. Military subs are concerned with the ability to NOT be detected and being able to detect enemies. Running at higher speeds would dramatically increase the noise produced, while sharply reducing the ability to pick up enemy contacts passively. So from a practical standpoint, military subs would not be expected to go faster than 25 knots at operation speeds (this figure is for the Seawolf, other subs have lower tactical speeds). One link I've seen is this one.

maybe one of those zippy little machine guns off an A-10

Err, no, no, no. The GAU-8 30mm gun weighs just over 280 kg and is 6.40m long.
So, you're looking good with your GAU-8-equipped bipedal robot... until you have to make a turn in a narrow street.

(also, the recoil on the GAU-8 is *massive*.)

L.

And isn't the free security it provides the continent

In 1997, the actual cost shares for the United States were 23.35 percent for the civil budget, since all 16 nations participate fully in this budget; 28.08 percent for the military budget, exclusive of the AWACS program; 41.48 percent for the AWACS program; and 26.46 percent of the NSIP budget. The total U.S. cost share is 28.45 percent across all the budgets.

We're talking about trade policy, and, wow, you managed to work in global warming, "the media" and George Soros. I salute you, winger.

Anyhoo.. you're totally wrong, or at least, at odds with the facts, since facts, truth, and debate in general occupy some fuzzy, extracranial space for people like you. The European Union numbers 500 million, or 2/3 larger than Am'rca, so there would most certainly be people to buy the damn imports. Europe's trade deficit with China is close to that of the United States, as you will find in this report by the Congressional Research Service dated January 4 of this year. Or you could just Google "china trade balance" and read the first 60 or so things that come up, it's all there.

Which brings me to what really tickles me pink about you, and others like you, viz. where do you get off being so self-righteous when you've obviously spent so little time actually reading primary source material and forming your own thoughts? Bill O'Reilly's talking points do not an argument make. Take that whole diatribe in the middle there, about global warming. Literally every point you make has been thoroughly refuted, and I'm not talking in a polemic, debatable fashion--you can go look these things up for yourself, and anyone who takes the time to do so (as I have) has to admit what you're saying is bunk. The 1970s Ice Age "consensus" consists of about 20 publications, almost all of them in the popular (not scientific) press. The notion that the medieval warm period compares to what we're seeing now is flat wrong. Solar radiation has been constant for the last 30 years, during which time the most significant warming has been recorded, so no correlation there. There is scant evidence that Mars is warming, and even if it is, human activity is a much more convincing explanation for our own warming. Etc. etc. etc.

That's not to say that convincing counterarguments to the anthropogenic warming hypothesis cannot be made, but these are not those, and you do not know them. Your slavish repetition of these canards makes it clear that you're not in the game for any sort of self-enlightenment, or desire to get at the truth, but simply to score points and massage your bruised ego by screaming at the George Soroses of the world. You're shouting at cars. Why? A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

The Pentagon Papers and Iran-Contra never happened. Nope, not at all.

Good thinking! "The government has a history of doing bad things, so whatever bad thing I suggest must be true, and anyone who objects must be brainwashed and ignorant."

Let me try one: I posit that the U.S. government will soon throw sniff out all the drug users and throw them into camps. This is based on the following:

1. At the government's encouragement, drug screening is now widespread in private industry and schools.
2. The government has a substantiated history of collecting supposedly private information.
3. Halliburton received a contract to build detention camps in the U.S.

Obviously, these camps are part the "final solution" to the War on Drugs. You might want to say, "Perhaps there's another reason for building them, like preparations for mass deportation of illegal immigrants," but anyone who says this is just brainwashed, man, by the corpo-fascist thugs and their dastardly agents of deceit. Prove me wrong.

Fun as this is, I'm going to have to give it a rest. Arguing with a conspiracy theorist is exactly like arguing with a creationist: no understanding is possible in the presence of such different standards of evidence. Once the need to search for answers in empirical reality is disposed of, anything's possible. The appeal of having certain Truths, in the face of a world that rejects them, is undeniable and has formed the basis of most cults throughout history. (Christianity, for example, in the days when Christians were persecuted by harsher means than the removal of government-mandated prayer.) Far be it from me to screw with your personal religion, but if it'll make you feel better to reply to this post by once again asserting that a person you don't know is a helpless tool of forces that only those with your secret knowledge understand, go right ahead. It's still a relatively free country.

Waste shouldn't be "stored", it should be recycled.

Only applies to spent fuel. You don't reprocess decommissioned reactor vessels. And reprocessing still leaves the fission products to deal with, as well as mining and processing tailings.

No, the problem with waste is that a chain of political idiots and their energy department appointees

The problem is that reprocessing isn't economical at current conditions - which is why initial U.S. attempts failed and why Germany is ending their program.

This might change if all the external costs were included; but then if all the external costs were included, we wouldn't even be considering plutonium and uranium fission.

(We wouldn't be considering biofuels from food crops either - biowaste, algae, and fuel crops like hemp and switchgrass, maybe bamboo. Growing food-grade corn to make fuel-grade ethanol is just plain stupid, and has more to do with lining the pockets of agribusiness than with meeting energy needs.)

And breeders aren't a perpetual motion machine. You still run out of uranium in the order of decades ro centuries. (Unless you go to thorium, in which case spallation "energy amplifiers" are a much better design. Those, and fusion, are where we should be looking to nuclear technologies.)

This completely overlooks the fact that unless you build a breeder reactor specifically for the purpose of making pure Pu-239 for nuclear weapons, you get a mix of Pu isotopes which absolutely can not be detonated

...until you separate them out, or change your bomb design to account for a different mix of isotopes. In 1962, the U.S. detonated a bomb made from "reactor grade" plutonium. (See 15th page of the PDF, footnote 5.)

Google for "Iran nuclear", and tell me that we're going to let every country on earth have a couple of plutonium factories, on the assumption that they're all too dumb to be able to do that.

Separation is not easy, but certainly not impossible. Many of the claims of difficulty of obtaining weapons-grade fissionables are based on the difficulty of handling highly radioactive waste. When you have martyr wannabe's standing by, though, a lot of these problems are solved. Shielding? Feh. "Come here, unskilled uneducated believer-type. You will die a glorious death for $CAUSE and be assured of a rewarding afterlife if you handle this Rock of the Gods exactly as I tell you..."

Indeed, given the fears of a "dirty bomb", bad guys don't even have to seperate, or achieve a fission bomb. Take a chunk of mixed Pu, stick it in the middle of a Ryder truck full of fuel oil and fertilizer, and drive into the center of $BIG_CITY. Let the good times roll.

If you have something that is valuable enough that someone is trying to break your 1024-bit crypto, you might actually have bigger problems than someone possibly breaking your crypto.

Meaning, you might keep an eye open for incoming Hellfire missiles or some such, or making sure your Oracle username/password isn't "scott/tiger":

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/agm-114 .htm

Ah, here we go:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V114/N40/crash.40w.html
http://www.geocities.com/roboplanes/cessna.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/ustreas/usss/t1pubrp t.html

By 1860, the bitter atmosphere arising from the discord between the northern and southern states had greatly increased the danger of political violence. As soon as Abraham Lincoln was chosen to be the Republican candidate for President that year, he began to receive numerous death threats. During the campaign, he was constantly surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards. In at least one instance, one of these bodyguards was Alan Pinkerton, the founder of the celebrated detective agency.

Lincoln's security detail grew after he assumed the Presidency. He chafed under this protection and worried that it made him appear unmanly, but he ultimately conceded its necessity. Numerous Metropolitan Police were detailed to the Executive Mansion to serve as guards. Because Lincoln did not want the Executive Mansion to take on the characteristics of an armed camp, the guards inside the Mansion (the doormen) dressed in civilian clothes and concealed their firearms. Uniformed, armed sentries were posted at the gates to the grounds and at the doors to the Executive Mansion itself.

During the Civil War, the military helped protect the Mansion. When the conflict started, soldiers actually camped inside the Executive Mansion until Washington was adequately fortified. Even after the city was deemed secure, military units were often assigned to serve as guards there.

Troops also frequently accompanied Lincoln during his travels. Indeed, throughout the Civil War, no member of Lincoln's family left the White House grounds unescorted. Thus, they were the first White House occupants to receive extensive personal protection. An armed, plainclothes member of the Metropolitan Police regularly accompanied Mrs. Lincoln on her outings. Moreover, the White House doormen never lost sight of the Lincolns' son Tad, who was considered a target for kidnappers. By 1864, four Metropolitan Policemen were assigned to serve as President Lincoln's personal bodyguards. One of these men, responsible for protecting Lincoln at Ford Theater on the evening of April 14, 1865, was having a drink at a nearby saloon when John Wilkes Booth fatally wounded the President with a shot to the head.

The NSA publishes some very useful guides for dealing with sensitive information here:
http://www.nsa.gov/snac/

Specifically, how to properly redact a Microsoft Word .doc is detailed in this document:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/nsa-redact.pdf

Not just that there's also the NRO, the INR, that DIA, the Department of the Treasury intelligence division, the NIC, the NCTC, the NSA, the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Naval Security Group Command, the Air Intelligence Agency, the Energy Department Office of Intelligence, the INL, the DS and the Information Security Oversight Office.

http://www.fas.org/irp/official.html

> 1. How does one find/fix breakages in 20,000 km of cable?

You drag a plow along the ocean floor until it snags the cable, you gently bring it to the surface, then you repair it on your cable repair ship: http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/t-arc.htm

Eh? Where are you getting this idea that Iran's leadership is insane? I have yet to read a credible source that gives me any particular reason to think Iran would be stupid enough to initiate nuclear attack. The mullahs are religious, Ahmadinejad hates on Israel—so what? Plenty of Israeli politicians still want to see the Palestinian Authority wiped out. Frankly, maybe a nuclear-armed Iran is exactly what Israeli moderates need to get their government to stop pissing off its neighbors in the Middle East with such impunity.

Yeah, but the Predators don't carry subtly menacing slogans, so they're completely different...

The menace of Predator UAVs armed with Hellfire missiles is anything but subtle.

Of course, I'd never accuse a civilian law-enforcement agency (albeit the one which invented SWAT) with arming their surveillance drones...

The Council authorized war in order to get Iraq back out of Kuwait.

1. uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions
2. restore international peace and security in the area

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the similarity this machine has to the Sikorsky Cypher.

I have doubts about how large this can be scaled. The primary reason we haven't seen large ducted or ringed rotors on a helicopter is mostly due to the increase in weight, along with some other non-trivial issues of needing to adjust blades indivudally at points in their rotation to maintain control. Ducted fans can work on a smaller scale, but you tend to need more than one of them as seen in the Moller Skycars and a few experimental tilt-duct aircraft. (Check out the nifty VSTOL Wheel for a good overview of other VSTOL concepts.)

It's not a bad idea for a UAV though, seeing as the U.S. military seems interested in developing both conventional and more experimental types of VTOL UAVs.

According to this report, there are a couple of executive orders involved. It's hard to blame Carter in particular, since later presidents could have changed policy, and Ford was opposed to reprocessing as well. I found another decent source on PBS.

The camera array on NASA's ER2 is a tad more sophisticated than simply a DSLR or two. The relatively limited and older IRIS system covers a strip approximately 40 nautical miles wide: exactly what kind of setup could accomplish this on a turboprop? I am not saying it could not be done, but it would take more than a few days of work. The possible selection of cameras on the ER-2 is listed in the first link, the National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scales for civilian and military usage are 2nd and 3rd:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/AirSci /ER-2/cameras.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs_c/guide.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs.htm

The camera array on NASA's ER2 is a tad more sophisticated than simply a DSLR or two. The relatively limited and older IRIS system covers a strip approximately 40 nautical miles wide: exactly what kind of setup could accomplish this on a turboprop? I am not saying it could not be done, but it would take more than a few days of work. The possible selection of cameras on the ER-2 is listed in the first link, the National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scales for civilian and military usage are 2nd and 3rd:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/AirSci /ER-2/cameras.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs_c/guide.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs.htm

TEMPEST specification it's a misleading lie.

http://www.fas.org/irp/program/security/tempest.ht m

I'll put it in StarCraft terms: you're spending your minerals on upgrading your Zealots, and failing to invest in the pylons and tech structures that would allow you to build a whole frickin' fleet of Protoss Carriers.
-flyingsquid

How about reading a bit further that article. Trieste was a bathyscape which two guys, Don Walsh and Jaques Piccard went down there, took some pictures and came up. Both were very much alive and well many years after that ... Manned devices classified as submarines haven't got much deeper than the NR-1 did though.

Is there reason? Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Israel, and their well-documented history of killing Palestianian, Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese civilians unprovoked. And using torture. And using terrorism. And using assassination. Yeah, _that_ Israel!

They have an illegal WMD stockpile (Yes, 650,000 Iraqis have been killed for the seemingly-ficticious reason of 'WMD related programs', a far minor crime compared to building an estimated 200 nukes that Israel is to date unpunished for), is it so implausible that they will strike first to prevent nuclear parity, and a policy of MAD and deterrence? Sure it kept the USSR and the US away from each others throats during the cold war, but Israel is accustomed to being able to murder with impunity (as they have done for decades), the idea of having to restrain themselves (or face annihilation) will be a bitter pill.

I assume you were trolling giving your hopelessly ignorant comment (and great work with the 'how fucking predicable', clearly we are all anti-semites for daring to discuss such an issue!!), but in the event you were not, try reading up on the policies of an ultra-violent nation you rush to the knee-jerk defense of.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/doc trine.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vie wArticle&code=CAR20070115&articleId=4477

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/doctrine/inde x.html

If you will recall, back in the 1980s, America's then bosom buddy Saddam Hussein -- then the defender of democracy in the Middle East -- engaged in a lengthy war with Iran. Both sides launched IRBMs at each other -- quite a lot of them. So, it shouldn't come as any suprise that Iran has some ability to build a rockets. It's hardly alone. If Iran actually put a payload into orbit, they would be the ninth country to do so. Many others (e.g. Canada, South Korea, Germany, Brazil) probably could do so if they chose to.

Here's a link to an unclassified five or so year old intelligence assessment of Iran's missile capabilities. http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/missile/rumsfeld/pt2 _katz.htm

As to why Iran would chose to build big rockets ... I dunno, maybe it has something to do with the fiasco in Iraq. I expect that the Iranians would like to ensure that the next bunch of incompetent fundamentalist Christian screwballs who decide to re-engineer the Middle East pick someplace other than Persia to liberate.

The US withdrew from the ABM treaty as was it's right. The given justification was that the limitations of the ABM treaty offered no significant protection from the former Soviet Union while severely limiting US options in protecting itself from other threats. I'd also add that the Soviet Union disregarded the ABM before the ink was even dry, so it was really nothing more than propaganda to begin with. http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/abmt/text/unil_us. htm

It is interesting though that we are kicking all this fuss up about Iran and Korea having any sort of nuclear program even though they insist it is for power generation only. Yet Isreal have a well known nuclear weapons program which we have been ignoring for years.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/corresponden t/2841377.stm

* Was there just one incoming target? Why? Even KJI can afford a few dozen missles.

One target, one missile. Why use more than one when you are still testing 1:1 first?

* Was the approximate time and direction of the threat known?

The humans knew it, the computer didn't until after launch.

* Any decoys deployed by the intruder? Why not?

Does any missile currently use a decoy?

* How large an area can it protect before the angle-off becomes unmanageable?

That's called the "range" of the defense system. Anymore "angle-off" and the target is out of range. One would presumably have an overlapping system of these.

* Any jamming from the intruder? Why not?

Placing a jamming system on the target is just making it easier to hit. It is easy to home in on the radio waves emitted by anything with a jammer.>

* How does this help against low-trajectory ICBM's, sub-launched IRBM's, or cruise missles, all capable of carrying sizeable WMD's?

"Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is the only core Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system which will be capable of engaging the full spectrum of theater class ballistic missile threats."
http://fas.org/spp/starwars/program/thaad.htm

"The THAAD system was designed to handle short and medium range ballistic missiles; such as Scuds and derived weapons. However, a limited incidental capability against ICBMs exists."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitud e_Area_Defense

It's not done under the FISA program, he's trying to confuse the judge. What they did was they got 1 FISA judge to declare the whole program legal, not case by case with probable cause, not a FISA court ruling, a ruling of a single FISA judge.

An actual legal FISA warrant is done case by case:

Each application
for a surveillance order must include, inter alia:

1) the identity of the federal officer making
the application;

2) the authority conferred on the Attorney
General by the President of the United States
and the approval of the Attorney General to
make the application;

3) the identity, if known, or a description of
the target of the electronic surveillance;

4) a statement of the facts and circumstances
relied upon by the applicant to justify his
belief that . . . the target of the electronic surveillance
is a foreign power or an agent of a
foreign power . . . [and] each of the facilities
or places [to be subjected to the surveillance]
. . . is being used, or is about to be used, by a
foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;

5) a statement of the proposed minimization
procedures;

6) a detailed description of the nature of the
information sought and the type of communications
or activities to be subjected to the surveillance;
[and]

7) a certification [from an appropriate executive
branch official] . . . that the certifying
official deems the information sought to be
foreign intelligence information . . . that the
purpose of the surveillance is to obtain foreign
intelligence information . . . that such
information cannot reasonably be obtained
by normal investigative techniques . . . .

http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/sojudge.pdf

I think it would be better if they gave up their nuclear weapons research rather than their space program. Better to cancel a destructive program than a constructive program to alleviate poverty.

Or bronze statues are put up in their honor and cities are named after them.

There are systems in place, albeit mainly fixed location (for the most part) that perform this task. Shotspotter is one that comes to mind, along with FireFinder for larger caliber weapons.

What caught my eye was that it was BU doing this research and development. I lived in Boston for a long time (Cape Cod resident now) and still read the Boston Globe. Just about two weeks ago there was an article (beware, Undertone pop-unders) about the Boston city government looking into deploying Shotspotter in Roxbury and Dorchester, neighborhoods that have seen an uptick in gun violence in the last couple of years (after about a decade of falling rates of shootings).

Now, despite the OP's write-up, I don't anticipate F-16s with LGBs loitering over Grove Hall, waiting to drop a 500 lb. smart bomb on a triple-decker on Blue Hill Ave. Nor do I think that this will happen in Sadr City, Baghdad. Iraqi insurgents would quickly adapt to this tactic and hold human shields.

Bottom line, speaking domestically, the police depend on citizens to call in with a report of "shots fired". Anything that takes the voluntary calls out of the loop can only decrease response time, and it's the sort of surveillance that's targeted to the transient sound of a gunshot, not a camera on a lamppost taking indiscriminent pictures of anyone who happens to be on a particular corner.

k.

Just so you know I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, here's a list of things you don't have a right to know, taken from 4-202 of that link I gave. It's a sensible list, and you should think very carefully about what's on it and why. Documents the Government doesn't automatically declassify are those that could reasonably:

(1) Reveal an intelligence source, method, or activity, or a cryptologic system or activity;
(2) Reveal information that would assist in the development or use of weapons of mass destruction;
(3) Reveal information that would impair the development or use of technology within a United States weapon system;
(4) Reveal United States military plans, or national security emergency preparedness plans;
(5) Reveal foreign government information;
(6) Damage relations between the United States and a foreign government, reveal a confidential source, or seriously undermine diplomatic activities that are reasonably expected to be ongoing for a period greater than 10 years;
(7) Impair the ability of responsible United States Government officials to protect the President, the Vice President, and other individuals for whom protection services, in the interest of national security, are authorized;
(8) Violate a statute, treaty, or international agreement.

The real issue here is where we draw the line between things that really should be classified, and things which shouldn't. The list above just exempts the document from automatic declassification -- documents are routinely classified for other reasons. The extent of the system is an ongoing debate, one for which both sides have valid arguments. It's certainly not going to be resolved by a few posts on Slashdot, especially by the vast majority of posters who have no idea how politics, national defense, or international relations work.

155mm M712 Copperhead. I think the G's are in the range of 1.6 X 10^4 IIRC.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m712.htm

Possibly releated to this is the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951. Here's a good summary page about what happens to inventions that are considered "too sensitive" to national security: http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/invention/index.ht ml I wonder if most people realize this provision exists in the patent law for the government to keep information quiet, and it really makes me wonder what might be contained in the some 4800 patent applications.

You think the courts will protect your rights? That "judicial oversight" means anything? In 2005 the FISA court received 2074 requests from the Department of Justice and approved 2072 (the other two were withdrawn). http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/2005rept.ht ml

The USA already has this sort of capability

No, the USA HAD this capability in the past but once the cold war threat was over, dismantled it. While we have other systems such as the experimental 747 borne laser that probably has some asat capability, we no longer have any operational ASAT weapons. It's provocative because even though a Chinese sat was targeted, by blowing the sat up into little pieces in uncharted and unpredictable orbits, the test created orbital hasards for everyone else.

It's the same court that would have issued the FISA wiretaps in the first place.

So it appears reasonable that if the court are competent enough to issue individual wiretap orders, they are probably competent enough to issue a blanket approval.

Possible but not likely. However, one term on the FISC (Claude Hilton) is due to expire in 2007. Two more are set for next year, two for 2009, one in 2010, two in 2011, one in 2012, and two in 2013 for the FISC. The Court of Review has vacancies coming in 2008, 2010, and 2012. All terms expire on 18 May of their respective years. All current judges would have been appointed by Rehnquist before he died.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court 2006 Membership

The President has clearly said he is not breaking the law, and despite what the liberal media is telling you, each and every wiretap still requires an warrant

I'm lost. Are you being sarcastic? Normally I'd think it obvious that this was tongue in cheek, except your nickname makes a Rush reference.

Is the United States Department of Justice, a department headed by an appointee of the president, also part of the liberal media? So when they wrote "This constitutional authority includes the authority to order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance within the United States"?

The entire executive branch, and much of the republican congress, has said it/they believe that the president has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps and furthermore he has done so.

It's actually 40 inches (1016 mm) long.

he NRO is the most pathetic of the US intelligence agencies, and is known for failing more often than not in just about all endeavors. For the NRO, a satellite making it into space at all is a big deal, because NRO projects have a history of dying in the design stage, and there have been other big failures such as a specialized launch vehicle blowing up on the launch pad, taking satellites with it.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of the NRO before, it's because the government does everything it can to keep the agency under wraps, mostly because it doesn't want the taxpayers to realize how many billions of dollars are flushed down this worthless toilet of a spy agency yearly.