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House and Senate Reject E-mail Surveillance
vena writes "The Star Tribune reports the House and Senate today agreed not to allow email surveillance of American citizens proposed by the Total Information Awareness program. Additionally, negotiators agreed to halt all future funding on the program without extensive consultation with Congress."
They won't let the Pentagon spy on Americans? That's OK, I'm sure we can find somebody else to do it for us, and return the favor to them, since we are allowed to spy on foreigners.
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Just don't lie to me, pal. Not that I'd know if you were.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
From the article: Lt. Cmdr. Donald Sewell, a Pentagon spokesman, defended the program, saying, "The Department of Defense still feels that it's a tool that can be used to alert us to terrorist acts before they occur." He added, "It's not a program that snoops into American citizens' privacy."
How can it not be a program that snoops into American citizens privacy? From past experience, I've found that the other issue is that once databases are available, they will be tapped for a variety of purposes not originally envisioned or intended.
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They care about themselves. The executive branch is increasingly refusing to even CONSULT with Congress regarding these admittedly outrageous plans. But you'd be wrong to think that they're blocking this because they give a shit about your rights. They just want to be included... to make sure they have a hand in everything. In this case they're just exercising their right to refuse to fund ANY project in an attempt to get the WH to play ball with them. Otherwise they're going to take their ball and bat and go home, I guess.
It would be excellent news if Poindexter didn't have a track record
of lying to Congress about what he was up to. Maybe they can find
a good military officer, a colonel maybe, to make those reports
to Congress.
If I hold my hands in front of my face, you can't see me
"It [echelon] hardly affects privacy of the American people"
Interestingly, that was one of the reasons that PGP export was allowed: American companies operating abroad had to use easily-breakable encryption, becuase it was all they were allowed to take to their worldwide offices. Of course, that meant that the government of any country they operated in could decrypt their comms, and tip-off native companies in competition with them.
Not that the US would ever sink to such depths... *cough*arms-sales-contracts*cough*
We still won something very valuable. After 9/11 *everything* was going through without so much as a question. At least now our elected representatives are saying, "hold on a minute," instead of just rolling over. The victory is that someone, somewhere is remembering that we have something called rights and they're at least taking the time to see if they apply.
TW
It depends on if you are an American citizen or not:
"The program could be employed in support of lawful military operations outside the United States and lawful foreign intelligence operations conducted against non-U.S. citizens."
Then again, how do they know that you are an American citizen without reading your email and checking you up?