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FBI Releases Secret Subpoena Information
gollum123 writes to mention a CNN article, reporting on an FBI information release. The number of secret subpoenas the Bureau filed last year reached 3,501. These documents allowed access to credit card records, bank statements, telephone records, and internet access logs for thousands of legal citizens without asking for a court's permission. From the article: "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the same panel that signs off on applications for business records warrants, also approved 2,072 special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies. The record number is more than twice as many as were issued in 2000, the last full year before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001."
not to be pedantic... but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Bill_of_Right s_of_1689
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
it, not Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone just published it.
Link : One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush
The difference is the wording, and the force of the document. What you've presented appears to have the force of law, but as such is always going to be subject to the whim of parliament.
In the US, the constitution is ostensibly the final word. It is higher than mere law. It is the contract by which law can be made. It specificaly enumerates the powers the government may have, lists serveral rights which must never be infringed, and finally limites the government to powers explicitly mentioned. The US bill of rights is part of this document.
The only problem with this is that the constitution must still be enforced by men. It is therefore vulnerable to "interpretation" by the men charged with its defence and usurpation by the more powerful men it is intended to regulate.
The constitution states the rights of the government and denies those not mentioned. The english bill of rights states the rights of men and makes no claim on those not mentioned.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Do you know if you've had a phone conversation with any of those 3501 people? If you have, you may be a "person of interest", and subject to even more scrutiny. Have you ever bent the rules on your income tax returns? Rolled through a stop sign? Once you become a "person of interest", pretty much everything you do may become evidence of you being a terrorist.
The question I have, though, is: How many terrorists have been apprehended based on these 3501 subpeonas? Any? Any at all? If not, then that is the clearest indication that they probably should not have been granted by FISA in the first place -- because they were probably inappropriate in any event. That is the reason that every US citizen should be demanding their elected representatives cause the NSA to cease and desist this sort of activity.
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
This is the same "final word" that has been changed 27 times over the course of its life? 27 times in 219 years - I make that one change every 8 years*. Yeah, that's some set-in-stone document to end all documents.
Before some crazy gets heavy with the mod-stick, understand I'm not knocking the constitution, just those people who hold it up as some kind of divine law. Karma be damned.
*yes, I know ten of those were enacted at the same time.
Wow! I bet they have a lot of terrorists to show for all that work. Right...?
d
Well, this guy was found in Pakistan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Sheik_Mohamme
Or was he? He has not been produced for trial, and may be dead, alive and hiding, or captured elsewhere. In addition, there is no evidence, and not even any prominent claim made, that wiretapping US Citizens led to the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Others were caught in US states such as Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
The list of people you provided were indicted, not captured. They are "most wanted" precisely because they have not been captured. You might have noticed this by the fact that a man named "Bin Laden" is at the top of the list. Wiretapping U.S. citizens has not led to the capture of any of these men, because these men and their associates almost certainly EXPECT that their phones are being tapped whether or not they are, and react accordingly.
Having said that, I suspect that visiting a single gay bar probably would not flag him as a closet homosexual. After all, who hasn't been to the odd gay bar or two? If he visited the same gay bar every week or two though, then that might raise some red flags (assuming that the NSA has a database of all drinking establishments with a 'sexual orientation of majority of patrons' field. If they do, then they could probably make a fair amount selling it in guidebook form...)
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Second most ISPs don't keep logs on your current web traffic, it's simply too much data to keep, most ISPs don't keep router logs more then a week (if they keep them at all, which themselves are useless and can takes hours to match them with DHCP logs and then with websites), DHCP logs are kept for a greater amount of time. Second the FBI doesn't care if you visit the normal anti-GWB websites, they might care if you visited it at the same time as going to Jihad Jim's bomb making HOWTO.
Also none of the pilots have been arrested because violating a TFR is not a crime, it's a regulatory action between the pilot and the FAA. The passengers would not have been effected one bit, since they did nothing wrong.
Wow! I bet they have a lot of terrorists to show for all that work. Right...?
You mean like these recent convictions, arrests, or indictments? Hamid Hayat, Abu Ali, and Sayed Ahmed, Shahawar Matin Siraj, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, and these 19?
Maybe your memory is fading, or you don't pay attention, but there have been plenty of others over the last few years.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What are the odds that there are 3000 invividual situations that legitmately warrant issuing a secret subpeona.
In a country of 300,000,000 people and a huge number of visitors and "undocumented guests"? When one person could have multiple subpoenas applied to them? When even a single foreign country has 3,000 front companies in the US used for espionage? I'm thinking that isn't too unlikely at all.
Let it be sealed, let it be 'secret' that way but there needs to be a check to the power of law enforcement.
There already is more than one check, among them are policy, the law, the Constitution, prosecutorial discretion, rules of evidence, judges, juries, trials, appeals, and legislative oversight.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell