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Poll Finds Mixed Support for Domestic Wiretaps
aspenbordr writes "The NYTimes reports that Americans are growing more and more concerned about the tradeoff between 'fighting terrorism' and civil liberties. Forty-seven percent of those polled responded they they did not support 'wiretapping in order to reduce the threat of terrorism'." From the article: "Mr. Bush, at a White House press conference yesterday, twice used the phrase 'terrorist surveillance program' to describe an operation in which the administration has eavesdropped on telephone calls and other communications like e-mail that it says could involve operatives of Al Qaeda overseas talking to Americans. Critics say the administration could conduct such surveillance while still getting prior court approval, as spelled out in a 1978 law intended to guard against governmental abuses."
It is ridiculous that 47% of Americans are not completely up-in-arms about this. We can't have our president breaking any law that he wants to.
Does this mean that the American public realise the terrorists are winning?
Does this mean people realize that the reduction of civil liberties are what the terrorists want?
Or were the other 53% confused? I would love to see the actual questions that are asked. Giving poll results without the source information is complete nonsense.
From TFA: Here's the problem...the phrase "Americans that the government is suspicious of", can (and is) defined differently every day. Such vagueness virtually invites a police state.
Dubya has shown on several occasions that he cannot be trusted to protect our civil rights. That's OK, he doesn't have to be trusted....that's why we have (had?) the FISA, to ensure that wiretapping is carried out in a lawful manner. All George had to do was run his requests through the court, and everything would have been completely legal. Apparently, that's too much trouble for King George, who is aggressively pursuing the doctrine of the unitary executive, believes he is above the law of the land, and regards our Constitution as "just a goddamned piece of paper".
Trusting George and his Gestapo (that's right, I said it) to safeguard your civil rights is like employing a wild dingo to guard your baby. As of now, "Americans that the government is suspicious of" refers to terror suspects, but it could just as easily refer to foreign-born, dissidents, liberals, or slashdotters.
It's time to stop King George before he corrupts the dream of the Founding Fathers beyond redemption. It's time to draw a line in the sand and say, "this far....no farther". It's time to take back our country.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
obtained after the fact. This invalidates the "need for speed"
agrument. The very few times someone in the media has confronted an
administration offical with this obvious logic, the response has
always been regression into a vague discription of the current NSA
program being "another valuable tool", or needing "every tool
available" to keep the American people safe.
I have not had the misfortune of having listened to the latest set of
talking points being pushed. But as far as I can see, there are only
a few reasons to not use FISA:
held to account for their actions
Either of these motives is an indication of the Bush administration
feeling that they need to operate outside the law.
If they really believe in the rule of law, they should move change the
law to fit the times. If not, they are just showing their contempt
for the rule of law.
I think the framers of the American Constitution are turning in their
gaves right now.
The government learned a long time ago that a population in fear will put up with a lot. Whether it's fear of a "domino effect" of communism, fear of swine flu, SARS, avian flu, millitias, terrorists, what have you. It's sadly too simplistic to make it a partisan issue, both parties have shown great aptitude in manipulating the population through fear.
That being said, it's sad that the country is pretty much giving the president a wash on this. But then, nobody said much about the USA PATRIOT act either. We had what, two senators vote against it the first time around?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Get real people. This crap won't make you any safer but will make you less free.
Those who trade liberty for security deserve neither - Benjamin Franklin
There's a great quote from Goering about using fear to lead a free public around, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.
Freedom is the most precious thing we have, without that, the Terrorists really win.
Notice that the question isn't about 'wiretapping whomever the president decides he doesn't like' or even about 'wiretapping without appropriate judicial oversight'. It's 'wiretapping in order to reduce the threat of terrorism'.
So, even with a question that implicitly assumes that the president is telling the truth and that there is no malign intent here, and that actually raises the Terrorist Bogeyman in its wording, STILL nearly half of respondents didn't support it.
I'm actually feeling quite positive here. Not only are people waking up to the bullshit that's being done in their name, they're seeing through the trick poll questions too...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
That "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" coming from an American is naivete at best. Innocence has never been a defense against paranoid "officials." Stalin used to execute people at a whim for political reasons, even if they did everything they could to be good cogs in the machine.
Bad governments have murdered more people than any other type of institution or any individual combined. It's amazing to me sometimes how so many Bush supporters can talk about tradition while disregarding history and regarding our founders' traditions and advise with open contempt.
I don't really understand what the big deal is.
We have a terrorist group, Al-Qaeda, which has repeatedly stated they want to kill lots and lots of american civilians. One day about 4 years ago, they killed 3000 in a few minutes. This proves they're not just all talk, not just an imaginary threat.
They have operatives working inside of the US. When they get phone calls from places like Morocco, Algeria, Syria, well.... I'd like for our government to know what the f they're discussing.
This is not about Domestic->Domestic calls. Those will not be tapped (according to whats being discussed here anyways). This is about international calls (though that is barely discussed in the summary, likely for partisan reasons).
meh. whether its legal or not, every administration since the telephone was invented would be guilty of this to some degree, if it should even be considered a crime. I obviously don't think it should be considering where the world is at to day, but as always, ymmv.
I'm all in favor of keeping an eye on the bad guys, but I can't help thinking that they're dodging the law because their evidence is so weak even FISA is calling BS on them.
It seems pretty evident to me that there is a large percentage of individuals in the US population that no longer think for themselves. They simply know if they dislike Democrats or they dislike Republicans. On any given issue they will simply spout whatever garbage their side's talking heads have been saying on television or political radio. It's unfortunate because can't hardly have a rational conversation with most people about anything involving politics. I don't want to hear the opinions of Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken regurgitated to me. What do YOU think? It's a truly sad state of affairs.
They basically got everything they wanted in FISA, which is already a very creepy process in many respects from a civil rights point of view. It's a secret court where already many questionable things could be swept under the rug.
There is no reason at all not to even go through FISA... unless they want to do something truly immoral and illegal.
This is a heads up to anyone paying attention that Bush's people are off the reservation, and are spying on peolpe other than terrorists - or that their definition of "terrorist" is becoming something that would surprise you.
And anyone who does not believe politicians (even their favorites) capable of doing something wrong when left unsupervised should have both their head (if you're that gullible, stay in your home where it's safe, and don't answer the door) and their American citizenship (we have a country where checks and balances are the law of the land, period), examined.
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the NSA was intercepting incoming calls from known or suspected terrorists. remember, members of both parties were informed aboit the activities since the program was undertaken, and there was no grave concern expressed then. now, i'm not a lawyer (as I'm sure most of us here aren't either), so I can't comment on the specific legalities. but it was not wiretapping, but international call interception. huge difference. and you know what, he'd better be doing that. if he wasn't, wouldn't his critics have said he wasn't "connecting the dots"?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
The argument has been made in two ways:
1. Congress gave us this power (which they didn't, sorry) when they approved going to war against Al Queada, and
2. If someone from Al Queada is calling, then we want to know about it - and quick!
However, as another poster pointed out, this latter argument falls apart under the FISA laws which state that you can start a wiretap as long as you go to the courts within 72 hours to get the subpeana. And even at that - it's a secret court! Nobody has to know save for a few people.
So, why not do it? I'm convinced it's because of 1 of 2 reasons:
1. They don't care to have people know at all because they don't think that they could get past any kind of judicial review,
2. They aren't doing specific wire taps, but are scanning and reviewing automatically any phone call from a foreign source.
A combination of the two is probably in effect. I'm willing to bet that their scanning every call coming in from either specific areas (such as Afganistan) and having the computer start checking it out, then alerting an NSA staff member if something sounds interesting (either through voice recognition or just checking the number - if it looks like one that's been used in the past or might have been used by a suspected terrorist, start tracking it).
Either way, it's rather troubling. It's not that I don't think that Bush & Co aren't serious about trying to stop terrorism - I think they're serious about it. The issue is that this kind of behavior is always rife for corruption. J. Edgar Hoover used it to stop "communists", but most of the time it was to keep his power base in check with blackmail and intimidation. Nixon tried to use his power to keep his powerbase by spying on the Democrats (aka - Watergate).
And we're suppose to believe that this power - unchecked and unregulated would only be used for good? What are the odds that someone won't be tempted to listen in on Christian Amanpour's recordings - after all, she talks to Afganistans and middle eastern people all the time, and just happen to listen to her husband's conversations about how to manage the Kerry campaign (or some other ranking Democrat).
Even if people say they won't, we know that absolute power corrupts. If they want to listen on phone calls, fine - they have a process for that to help keep corruption down. If they want to scan all incoming and outgoing calls from the US to other countries, that's fine as long as they get the laws passed to give them the power to do so and check unbalanced power.
Otherwise, the temptation to do something bad will be too much for some - it was too much for President Nixon whom, by all accounts, was a pretty good President. Remember, he thought he was doing the right thing by staying in office, and never dreamed that maybe - just maybe - he had taken his powers too far.
Of course, this is all just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Now Bushie doesn't want us to refer to this program as "Domestic Spying", but rather "Terrorist Survelliance". How's that for some Orwellian word play? The worst part about all of this is the American people, once again, have demonstrated that they will allow their leaders to do anything, absolutely anything, as long as a couple buzzwords are tossed in. A politician can introduce a bill that sanctions the torture of grandmothers, and it will pass with little scrutiny as long as he repeats "terrorists" and "sex offenders" a few times.
The poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush's authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism"; 46 percent disapproved. When the question was asked stripped of any mention of terrorism, 46 percent of those respondents approved, and 50 percent said they disapproved.
And there you have the manipulation of statistics to prove a point. Had they ask the question "Do you approve of Mr. Bush's authorizing eavesdropping on terrorists without prior court approval" the numbers would have been even higher in favor of Bush.
Really, the liberal media needs to stop with the baby crap of calling Bush "Mr. Bush". He's the president, show some respect even if you don't agree with his policies and call him "President Bush". Also, for the love of god, stop calling Bill Clinton "President Clinton". It's former President Clinton, like you do for every other one.
There is no use in multiplying examples. The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say 'Guns before butter', while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words.
Actually, however, the avoidance of reality is much the same everywhere, and has much the same consequences. The Russian people were taught for years that they were better off than everybody else, and propaganda posters showed Russian families sitting down to abundant meal while the proletariat of other countries starved in the gutter. Meanwhile the workers in the western countries were so much better off than those of the U.S.S.R. that non-contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders had to be a guiding principle of policy. Then, as a result of the war, millions of ordinary Russians penetrated far into Europe, and when they return home the original avoidance of reality will inevitably be paid for in frictions of various kinds. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye.
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one's subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one's thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean word where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Seriously, why is it that so many conservatives don't trust that stupid, evil, wasteful government to run a social program (just give me my taxes back!), but trust them completely and lovingly to tap your phone or imprison you without trial?
Why are so many patriots so happy to violate the constitution? You can't burn a flag, but you can listen on my phone calls without due process? Why is everyone a constitutional scholar when it comes to guns or free speech, but starts whistling and looking uncomfortable when it's comes to due process?
Is the world some delicate and beautiful flower that will be crushed by our founding father's foolish "bill of rights?" Are times all that different?
Has everyone forgotten why we have these laws? We saw the consequences of not having them not that long ago. Most people who saw the civil rights movement and Watergate are still alive today. Collective amnesia?
What kind of patriot are you, if want the ten commandments in a courthouse, but not the constitution?
How do you not call yourself a hypocrite, when you impeach a man for lying about his affair, but not a man who admits to violate his oath of office, and the law of the land, and declares he will keep right on doing it?
FISA hardly ever said no. There's only one reason why they would want to hide their spying from FISA... "terrorists" now include their political enemies.
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Good point after all, our canels(I forget which president started that system), our highways (Eisenhower), the panama canel, our flying capabilities(DOD), our space capabilities (NASA), our oil based Automobile(DOD supporting trucks), our nuclear power (DOD-DOE) were all developed by private enterprise and nothing came from the gov.
Even though I am a long-time libertarian, I will say that there are times where gov. make sense. One is to help push us off oil.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Whew. It's a good thing I'm an ordinary American, unlike the rest of you commie techno-freak Slashdotters.
While the parent has been moderated up for making a funny statement (and it is), the statement also cuts to the deathly serious nature of what exactly is wrong with the NSA wiretapping program. Few people, myself included, debate that we need as much intel as possible to try and curb future terrorist attacks. I do not debate that there are times when expediency is needed, as provided for in the FISA. While there are surely plenty of persons surveilled with probably cause, who is to say that "ordinary Americans" couldn't be next, with or without probable cause?
Traditionally, the person to say is the judicial and, to a lesser extent, the legislative branches. But, without the judicial or congressional checks, which this administration has flouted, it the President (along with the attorney general, and others) who has decided. The framers of the constitution were fearful of that kind of unchecked power in the hands of the presidency. I for one am even more skeptical of this presidency.
President Nixon was forced into resignation for ordering, and subsequently attempting to cover-up, the break-in at the Watergate Hotel (among other abuses, such as bombing Cambodia). That, too, was in some ways a President using his powers to spy on his enemies (in this case, the DNC), and breaking the law to do so. In this case, the president has been given a lot of leeway because the enemies are terrorists - enemies of the state and people. However, I (and numerous legal scholars, and half of Congress to boot) suspect that the President has still broken the law in pursuit of these enemies.
If Nixon was forced into resignation (lest he be impeached), shouldn't this President at least be under more heat than he currently is receiving? I asking a genuine question: can someone explain to me why more Americans are not up in arms over this?
Do you approve of using wire taps to stop terrorist attacks:
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Me personally, I would check Yes. Now if the poll was:
Do you approve of wire taps on US citizens inside the US with no oversight outside of the Executive branch of government?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
I would check, circle, draw arrows to, highlight and in all possible ways indicate No.
Using the FISA court to issue warrents and have at least SOME level of oversight is important to me. Mind you, this time last year the ACLU was pitching a loaf over the "secret court" and lack of oversight.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Why do you find it necessary to lie when the facts prove the point?
"And for your fucking information, everybody on the planet except Bush and Gonzales has concluded he broke the law."
That's a lie.
"The analysis, by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, was the first official assessment of a question that has gripped Washington for three weeks: Did Bush act within the law when he ordered the National Security Agency, the country's most secretive spy agency, to eavesdrop on some Americans?
The report reached no bottom-line conclusions on whether the program was legal, in part because it said so many details of the operation remained classified."
See that? The situation has many unknowns that require a thorough investigation.
I love how assholes like you screech about "BROKE TEH LAW!!!!" while completely ignoring due process and making idiotic proclamations of guilt.
Apparently you are so serious about enforcing the law that you're willing to ignore it to hang Bush.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship...
I wouldn't rely on Goering as an authority about what is possible or not in a democracy. It's like when a tobacco executive says "Well there are all sorts of things that can give you cancer. Heck you can get cancer from wheat germ, right?" If it was so simple to get people to simply "go along" in a democracy, the why did the Nazis feel the need to opt out of theirs? Also why wasn't the US at war with Germany in 1940? Had it been left to Roosevelt, he certainly would have just dragged everyone along.
No laws broken here? Are the 9th and 10th Amendments, the stop-bits on the Bill of Rights, really that meaningless to you? Do you not realize the importance they have on limiting the scope and power of authority?
Congress cannot make any law which supersedes the Constitution. They have, and SCOTUS has upheld them, but in reality every single one of them is illegal.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
That Americans are not more generally outranged by this program calls to mind a relevant Ben Franklin quote during the 1787 Constitutional Convention:
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And of course, all that's needed for probable cause is for Bush, Cheney or whatever faceless functionary is the guy of the day to decidde you must be, right? Whataver happened to judicial oversight and checks and balances? This is exactly the problem- no one is watching the watchers, and that's The recipe for fascism, which was what the whole structure of constitutional law was set up to prevent. Whatever happened to the spirirt of patriotism and courage that gave our country such strength? Did we give it up for comforting lies and "bread and circuses"? The thing everyone needs to remember is this- The state is inherently the enemy of the people. It always has been and it always will be, with the exception of brief periods of time when people overturn it and create a new state- which will then, sooner or later become exactly like the old one, only better at screwing the populace. If you trust the state, you are complicit in your own subjugation. Questioning authority is not a crime- it's a moral obligation. Aw, screw it- I'm gonna go slink off to my criminal enclave with all the rest of the fools who believe in freedom...
"What? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the constant beeping of my bullshit detector..."
The snippet above says 47% do not support 'wiretapping in order to reduce the threat of terrorism'. That's NOT what the actual article says: the word "warrantless" is what's missing. I ABSOLUTELY support wiretapping terrorists, drug dealers, whoever...but get a warrant! It's freakin' EASY, and it's required by the fourth ammendment.
Even if you trust this president, the unfettered and unchecked power for warrantless wiretaps is the first step towards a dictatorship. Even if Bush doesn't abuse the power, who's to say the next guy, or the guy after him, will show the same restraint? Our founding fathers codified this in the fourth ammendment because they realized the danger such power posed to democracy.
Does the fourth ammendment make life for law enforcement a little harder? Probably. But so does the entire bill of rights. If the war against terrorism trumpts the fourth ammendment, I don't see why it wouldn't also trump, say, the right to bear arms. Once again, even if warrantless wiretapping might be undertaken with the best of intentions, it's also the first step on the road to dictatorship.
The way I see it, the difference between the citizens of a democracy and those of any other government form is that the government is ours, and the responsibility for its care is likewise ours. If we only become concerned with the actions of our government when it affects us directly, we are abrogating our responsibility as citizens. Also, an American citizen being a terrorist is not for the president to decide, nor for the court of public opinion. If I am guaranteed a fair and speedy trial by the law, I expect that right to be granted, regardless of the nature of my crime.
The argument here (it hasn't been done to you, so why are you upset?) is a fallacy. Even if you care nothing about other people's rights (which have been violated), or about the rule of law, you should care about the fact that your rights can easily be violated.
Those of us on the other side of the issue care about this for the same reason anyone would care about a neighboring country building up an enormous army. As much as they claim it's only for defense, and that they'll never use it against your country, you have to be suspicious. When they start invading other countries, even if they justify it with sweet words, moral obligations, and claiming that they were invaded first, you get very very nervous. It's not necessarily because you think they're evil, or that they're necessarily even wrong (after all, who's to say that at least some of those countries didn't actually attack first?), but because they've shown that they don't mind using their newfound power for their own ends. Regardless of their original intentions, you start wondering whether something your country had considered normal practice before might be considered aggressive by the new military power. Besides, the argument that they aren't necessarily just being aggressive gets less and less convincing as time goes on and their behavior doesn't change. It creates fear.
In all likelihood, the administration believed it had good reasons for doing what it did. They usually do, and often what they try to do isn't all that different from something that would be a good idea. The problem in this case is that the administration's new army of wiretapping has NO OVERSIGHT. It is accountable to no one other than the a select few administration officials, and realistically they are both too busy to look into all of the details and not inclined to believe that mistakes might have been made. Here I'm talking about honest mistakes, like the nightmarish story (not really quite on the same issue as this, but related) of the guy who was picked up and held in prison without legal recourse because his name happened to be the same as a terrorist's. Those are bad enough; what happens when inevitably the people doing the hiring make a mistake and put someone who will abuse his power into a position with so little accountability?
The idea that I shouldn't be upset because my own rights have not been actively violated, while logically sound, is in reality a disaster. Sure, the dog seems to be rabid and has blood on its paws and face, but that doesn't mean it'll attack ME.
Those that support this surveillance primarily argue that we gain security in the form of protection against future terrorist attacks. I find this assertion to be highly dubious simply because I give the 'bad guys' more credit than to openly discuss their plans in any manner that might not be considered secure. However let's assume for the sake of argument that spying on Americans without warrants does indeed somehow prevent every major terrorist plot in the future. I still wouldn't support it because I'm not willing to trade my liberties for that protection.
I think that once we allow ourselves to be stripped of a constitutional liberty we're on a slippery slope. Maybe today we're only trying to justify the removal of unreasonable search and seizure. However who's to say that in the future we won't be trying to justify the removal of the right to bear arms or the right to free speech. If we as a country are not strong and brave enough to face the threat of terror without giving up our constitutional rights to do so, then how can we clothe ourselves in the vestiges of patriotism that were borne from those very rights? I used to like to think that I lived in "The land of the free and the home of the brave"; however it's looking more and more like we'd rather live in the land of the secure, and the home of the pragmatic. I don't see how we can possibly consider ourselves brave if we're willing to simply give away our freedoms.
Don't you have someone you'd die for?
Just because a wiretap doesn't yield the information you were looking for does not excuse you from obtaining permission (a warrant) to execute said wiretap.
The fact that you think it does illustrates just how confused you are on this issue.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I don't see how your quote proves that the NSA is intercepting only incoming calls.
Also, what do you think the Attorney General is going to say? "We've been intercepting calls from people who we thought may have something to do with al Qaeda, but some of them actually have no relation to the group." Sure. Who exactly determines if there is a "reasonable basis to conclude" if someone is involved with al Qaeda?
The problem here is that there is no oversight to the program: no checks and balances. The way it's set up it can easily spiral out of control and run amuk over the 4th Amendment and the rights of innocent Americans.
Blindly obedient much?