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The NSA Knows Who You've Called
Jamie adds: Traditionally, the devices which record dialed phone numbers are called pen registers, and trap-and-trace devices. The ECPA provided some legal privacy protection. It was controversial when Section 214 of the Patriot Act amended 50 USC 1842 to allow the FBI to record this information with minimal oversight. The Department of Justice has been required for some time to report to Congress the number of pen registers and trap-and-traces, though in recent years [PDF, see question 10] it declared that information classified.
If anyone has information about how the NSA, as opposed to the FBI, has been involved in domestic phone number collection, please post links in the discussion.
In related news, the National Security Agency has closed down an inquiry into the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program," a separate program from this one, by refusing to grant security clearance to the lawyers in the Department of Justice. The NSA and the DoJ are both established under the executive.
I for one suggest NSA take aim at Qwest and bomb them back to to the PSTN-age!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What an awesome tool for a government agency to have!
... you approach an airport terminal and hand them your ID card (or scan your arm) but you can't board the plane because you've been making too many phone calls to your friends who happen to have a rap sheet. </tinhat>
You know what I love? Scenarios! How about this one: You're arrested as a suspect for a crime you didn't commit. The government doesn't have anything on you except that there are no other suspects or witnesses. What they do have, is a network of vertices (phones) and edges (calls) spanning the past year of your life. They also have a list of "dirty" nodes or telephone users who have a rap sheet or ties to anti-American groups.
Thanks to Dijkstra's & the Bellman-Ford algorithms, it's a hop skip and a jump to a prosecutor saying "we have records showing you called your mother on such and such date prompting her to call her hair dresser who has been forwarding money to his family living in Mexico that has ties to Islamic Extremist groups!"
Farfetched? Maybe. But you don't have to be a Sci-Fi author to imagine crazy abuses of this data.
In the eyes of the government, we are all innocent until proven guilty. This could easily be turned into a data mining tool making some of us "less innocent" than others. And frankly, I'm not looking forward to that day.
<tinhat> Imagine a time and place where you have a security rating
My work here is dung.
America sucks. It didn't use to. But it sucks now.
Land of the free my ass. I want the word free taken off all anthems, pledges, etc. It is pure propaganda now.
So many questions, but me no longer wonders how those biggie telco mergers got past regulators anymore...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Actually Bin Laden came that close to being snuffed by the NSA, since they have tapes of him talking to his mother by sat-phone, while he was in Afghanistan and she was in Saudi Arabia. This is why Clinton bombed Afghanistan and Sudan using long-range cruise missiles. They missed him, too, by a few minutes, unfortunately.
Of course, last I heard, he only used trusted human couriers to deliver messages. He may be a madman, but he is a smart madman. And most of these couriers were not American, but Pakistani and Saudi citizens, and they try to be as discreet -- and "un-islamist" as possible. So the NSA domestic spying program is definitely not useful against terrorists. But remember, kids, if we can't listen to your phone, the terrorists have won!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Anyone who didn't see this one coming hasn't been paying attention. When Risen at the NYTimes revealed the 'turrst surveillance program' (to give it its Orwellian name) every single indication was that this was the tip of the iceberg, from Abu Gonzalez' evasive testimony to Congress (specifically all the overly definitive "this program" statements) to the fact that TIA never really went away, it just moved from DARPA to Fort Meade. Add in the recent testimony of that AT&T employee about the NSA tap room in SF, well, duhh. Still to come - every single international call is monitored, to match voice patterns. Keyword analysis is (AFAIK) still a black art but identifying the recipients through voicewaves is old hat. So when Mr Bush says "we want to know who's talking to terrorists" he means it literally, and after the fact, not before. Of course, the NSA measure computing power not in flops, or MIPs, but in acres, so it's anyone's guess what the corporations turned around and agreed to after 9/11. FISA would never have covered this wholesale data mining, congress would never have authorised it, so we're back to that old chestnut, "we're at war" Of course I live in the UK, where we have no expectation of privacy and the fact that GCHQ is routinely spying on every single one of us goes uninvestigated and unremarked. In some ways the US is ahead of us on this. Why don't the democrats propose a constitutional right to privacy? How would the GOP argue against privacy from government? Their voters heads would explode... federal government..
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Thank goodness the UK isn't planning anything like that.
One (TLA) word for you: GCHQ.
Think NSA without the silly "no-domestic-spying" rule.
Have a nice day.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Currently it's a simple message saying I'm not available and to leave a message. Now I'll have to add:
Be aware that the National Security Agency may be recording this call and anything you say may be used against you. I have no control over this situation as my phone provider is turning over this information on all its customers to the NSA.
Can't wait to hear the questions about this when people start calling.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
My neighbor has head-in-sand mentality. He believes that (a) since he doesn't commit crimes, the gov't will not surveil him, and (b) since he doesn't commit crimes, even if they do surveil him he doesn't care, and (c) if he ever does commit a crime, then the gov't can surveil him, with or without a warrant, since he deserves it. Now that the gov't has collected his phone records without a warrant (we live in BellSouth territory), I wonder if it will change his mind?
drink beer, and let the water run the mill
No, the UK just plans to track every single car's movement using a series of cameras that read license plates, and they video every square inch of public space. It's not any better, just different.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made -- across town or across the country -- to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
And later on...
Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.
The telcos stand to make out like gangbusters: a) they ingratiate themselves to the military and the government, which will come in handy to defeat Net Neutrality legislation, b) they can sit there and claim plausible deniability when someone brings suit against them because their phone records were used against them in court wrogfully, as they claim they're not supplying personal information to the NSA and c) the NSA, by running these algorithms and tracing calling patterns is generating data that could potentially be used by them to modify call routing schemes, change marketing penetration, and generally give them access to potentially useful information, which I'm sure the NSA will be only too happy to provide, to gain further cooperation.
Seems as if the telcos are now firmly in bed with the government and will pretty soon be able to write their own ticket to profits on the backs of taxpayers. Are all these illegal immigrants sure they want to be in this country?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
How do you guys over there feel about the ubiquitous video surveillance?
One of the great things about the public education system is that it doesn't teach a critical understanding of historical events. Take police states for example. Most people in the US think they're built in a day and that a police state only exists when thugs in snazzy uniforms goosestep down the street. They not only don't know, but don't even want to know what leads up to the formation of a police state.
You know what does? People railing against one socio-political-economic class as the root problem of society. Newsflash, most classes are where they are for reasons they could have helped or legitimately earned. A pluralist society needs that class diversity to reinforce individualism. And let's not forget perceived enemies of all types. Then there's the "just give up part of your liberty and you'll be safe, if you've got nothing to hide of course." It's like gun control. There are a lot of cops out there who can't shoot worth a damn and police departments are legendary for resistance to change. Do you trust them with your daily safety? I don't.
When people say to you "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," you can respond (which I usually do) with "no decent, civilized person would ever have grounds to criticize the basic checks and balances that you oppose."
Dear Osama,
please can you start using the telephone more often? We're having real trouble finding where you are! It would help if you phoned one of your relatives, spoke loudly and clearly into the phone, and if you can say a few of our keywords that would be great.
Thanks!
The NSA
Yes, there are some things that other countries do better than the United States. Privacy is probably one of them. But there are many other things that the United States does better than other countries. The UK for example, does not allow its citizens to own handguns. Germany restricts what its citizens can say about the holocaust. France has very restrictive labor laws. If you are really thinking about moving somewhere else, you might want to consider all of the laws in a particular country, not just privacy.
Repeat after me: The terrorist threat is minimal.
In the last ten years, smoking has killed 4 million Americans. Traffic has killed 400.000. Terrorism has killed 4.000. When will you stop handing total power to the government just to fight this one, close to irrelevant risk? And why not spend those many billions on the healthcare system and traffic safety?
I think you don't appreciate how clever this really is. Once the terrorists are no longer jealous of your freedom, they will lose interest and leave you alone. All the NSA has to do is remove all of your freedoms and the problem is solved.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
Step 1) Put the technological infrastructure in place
Step 2) Place your political friends and allies in charge of the infrastructure
Step 3) Reduce measures to control abuse of they system by claiming it's in the interests of "national security"
Step 4) Undermine the efforts of your political enemies with your newfound power
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Never did I think I'd actually be glad to be a Qwest customer. I mean, after all the rolling over that Qwest has done, all the anti-customer behavior, I'm surprised they took the moral high ground.
Oh, wait. They didn't, they were just afraid they'd get sued.
"a database of every call ever made inside the USA" ... "has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans"
Man, there are waaaay more than 10 million Americans... but I guess they probably have no reason to record the calls of the Religious Right or people watching Fox News... since they are good little toadies... so that probably cuts it down to size...
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
..the United States does better than other countries. The UK for example, does not allow its citizens to own handguns.
You do realize that most people in the UK would feel that you have that one backwards? - Not allowing handgins is seen as a good thing.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
does this include t-mobile and cellular-only companies?
-- lol pwned
It only costs a few buildings, over 3,000 lives but man oh man look at all the great stuff you can do now. You can run roughshod over civil rights and the population will let you do it!
Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, OMG TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!!!
Keep your population on edge with a color coded system so they won't question anything. Oh need to raise the level..Is your bathroom breeding terrorists?
Terrorism is the new Communism(tm)
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
FUCK NO.
I actually can't believe that it's gotten to this point. Every day on the news there is unveiled yet another invasion on my privacy and the privacy of my fellow citizens. Every day there is another civil liberty trounced.
Every day there is news of how Dick Cheney is getting fatter on Halbituron dollars with no-bid contracts. Every day there is news of Bush appointing an old friend or serious yes-man to some high-level position in government that causes nothing but stress.
And every day, the eyes of the people in this country glaze over and they quickly forget about the attrocities to our rights revealed from the day before. I don't understand the mentality.
I actually find myself getting physically angry these days at the hubris with which the executive operates. There is no one standing in their way. Illegal wiretapping is now all but forgotten because the executive has envoked the "State Secrets" privledge - it's not even a real law, but part of what is known as "common law" but judges won't stand UP to these people.
When you are a person hell-bent on control and dictatorship, it's hard to be stopped when the people who have the power to stop someone won't step up. Hell, just yesterday I read that GW Bush was saying how wonderful a president Jeb Bush would make. The man that botched the Florida election in 2000, the man with ties to arguably the most powerful family in the country if not the world... With two Bushes we have seen at least 3 wars.
And the country will vote for Jeb. And the Bushes will continue to reign supreme. Already GW Bush has called for an end to presidental term limits. No surprise he'd want that passed before Jeb is elected.
This country is no longer a democracy or even a republic. I get no say, and it is quite clear that the leaders in Washington in no way represent the will of the people. The country is ruled by money, greed, and power.
I really, really hate to make this analogy. I loathe it actually. But the parallels between current events in the US and Nazi Germany are striking. Germany launched war based on the call to stamp out terrorisim. They controlled the populace thorough fear of outsiders, destroyed international trust, and made the country a very us-vs-them scenario of patriotism that allowed a fanatic to sieze control. Hitler very much said (paraphrased) "I can beat terrorism but only if you grant me more power than I normally have." Hello Patriot Act. And finally, Nazi Germany was stupidly meticulous with their records, including serious amounts of domestic spying.
People. Listen. We are now under-represented if not completely un-represented. The federal government is no longer a checks-and-balances system, with unprecidented power being granted to the executive, going completely unchallenged. I have never before seen this ability to completely shut down investigations into illegal activities. Futher, no presidency has ever seen this degree of secrecy. We are governed by laws that we AREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO READ. How can you be governed by laws that the government won't even acknowledge exist??
I have become a person I never wanted to be. Conspiracy theory fills my head. But I'm not reading this stuff on some horrible "bushkills.com" site or something. Everything I read is on the front page of /. or the NY Times or Washington Post.
So I'm afraid. Not sure there is anything I can do but try to rally people behind me and behind the very few who actually dare say "no" to the executive. I never thought I'd live in this type of fear of my government, and in fear that we may be witnessing the end of the government as our forefathers saw it.
My only solace is that things of this nature have happened in the past, and have somehow righted themselves. So let's hope that this is just another Linconesque suspension of habius corpus, and that these wrongs will eventually be righted. But with such secrecy, and so much more going on than I will ever know about...
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
I think it's time to Slashdot these companies.
6
If you have Verizon, MCI, AT&T, SBC, or BellSouth for local phone service or long distance, DIAL 0 and complain to the operator.
If you have Cingular, AT&T, or Verizon for cell phone service, DIAL 611 and get a customer service rep on the line to complain to. REMIND THEM THEY ARE IN VIOLATION OF THEIR AGREEMENT WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU CAN SWITCH TO ANOTHER PROVIDER WITHOUT PENALTY.
More info here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/11/91046/796
The desire of the vast majority of Americans to root out terror in the US has given the government the mandate to use communication records.
I'm sorry but that simply is not the case. Most of the laws sent by congress are written by lobbyists now. What is *your* lobbyist doing about it? Don't have one? Thought not. That is why they spy on you.
Sophisticated terrorists already know they are being spied on and avoid electronic communication. For example, Bin laden uses human couriers for this very reason. My phone company simply betrayed me for money. The US government does it because in it's opinion, it is above the law, and it fears disruption of the current cozy system.
I think they are scared of political movements, rather than terrorists. For instance, people of Mexican origin and / or nationality are organizing now. Where will that lead? There is more income inequality now than decades past. Will that ignite some sort of movement to re-adjust the balance of power between companies and workers?
That is what scares the government. It could bring an end to Facism. (No, I'm not saying they're Nazis. But they are authoritarian, rule with a bunch of companies, and suppress dissent.)
Cheers,
-b
Article the sixth [Amendment IV]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This NSA story always gets me going in the morning...
Dear Qwest;
I recently signed up for your local phone service. I haven't been using it very much, and was considering dropping it. But because I read today that you're standing up for my rights (even at the cost of government jobs), I've suddenly decided, without hesitation, to keep the phone service.
In addition, my business will soon be doing complete overhaul of their phone system, as well as their internet setup. I have a bid from the local qwest office on the project. I think I'll go with them.
Thanks!
---
Dear 2600/EFF/ACLU;
Wouldn't it an interesting to have one of your guys go overseas, to say, France (republicans still hate the French) and call the US a bunch. Don't say anything weird. Just make a bunch of calls at odd times (completely random), for very short to very long lengths (again, random). And then start to make a bunch of calls every 15 minutes, exactly 15 minutes apart. Then call New York or DC or something like that (from France). Then call the same number from your US number. Just be sure to do something that would get flagged by George's precious little algorithm.
Then?
Watch the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA show up at your door.
Proceed to Supreme Court doorstep and hold a vigil until this gets ruled unconstitutional, which shouldn't take very long (only 4 to 10 years).
Thank you!
---
Dear Verizon;
Why do I pay you $50 a month to tell George Bush that I'm talking to my parents every Sunday night? Or that I order pizza at 1:00 am often enough? Because Bush now knows that I've called planned parenthood, does that mean my federal student loans are in jeopardy, just like all those people in Africa who can't even talk about condoms?
Fuck you.
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it...
Customers of AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth (and Cingular, which is AT&T/Bellsouth) need to sue the companies. They have violated regulations meant to protect the customers. If the companies willing to do this get hit heavily, they will be less willing to do it. The companies not fined and judged to the brink of collapse can then take market share from them, and we'll have more phones covered by companies unwilling to do this.
On a related spooky note, the department of Immigration and Naturalization already tracks vehicles (via an automated photo matching system) driving both directions at their (highly unconstitutional) "checkpoints". On the way towards the border you drive through an array of cameras over the highway, on the way back you stop at the checkpoint. I'm not talking about crossing the border here...I'm talking about getting within 50 miles of it and getting searched just because you drove to the most southern part of this country.
If you were actually able to exercise that right, then it might be understandable. But the logic falls down when you consider:
When are you going to do this?
So when are you going to topple the government? It seems more like you are going to sit back and let your government turn into a dictatorship, all the while saying "we're free because we have the right to own guns..."
If you aren't going to use them, you might as well not have them. Your guns have done nothing whatsoever to protect your freedom and they will continue to do nothing as long as they are not used.
Interesting. You've conflated the (obviously and unarguably true) fact that most Americans want the government to prevent terrorist attacks against us with the assertion that the administration is free to do whatever it wants in pursuit of that goal.
Obviously, I disagree. Defense of our country still must take place within the framework of our system of laws and the Constitution of the United States. To the degree that the laws need amending, I think that they clearly should be - although the current administration has shied away from this path. Instead, the Attorney General has repeatedly asserted that laws governing the gathering of intelligence data, even domestically, are not within the purview of Congress to issue, and that the executive branch can simply disregard them. When Congress has offered to make changes to legislation to make it more palatable to the administration, their offers were rebuffed: simply put, the administration does not wish to be governed by laws, regardless of their actual content.
As for the rhetorical device you use - that the opinions you hold are that of the "great silent majority" - I can only say that in polls on a similar issue (the "warrantless wiretap" question), the data would seem to hold otherwise. In a poll run by the American Research Group, there was a near 50-50 split on the issue of whether the president should be censured over the NSA warrantless wiretap issue.
Republicans (33%): Favor censure: 29% Oppose censure: 57% Undecided: 14%
Democrats (37%): Favor censure: 70% Oppose censure: 26% Undecided: 4%
Independents (30%): Favor censure: 42% Oppose censure: 47% Undecided: 11%
Total: Favor censure: 46% Oppose censure: 44% Undecided: 10%
I assume for the sake of this arugment that if approximately half of those polled supported a censure resolution on this issue, then more than half would be opposed to the wiretaps generally.
Remember when the neocons were namedropping "the Founding Fathers" at every opportunity? Care to guess why they stopped?
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, OMG TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!!!
oh man, I read that like Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers, developers"
I have a sudden image in my head of Bush prancing around repeating endlessly:
Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism, Terrorism...
Also, we receive only one side of the story: the one the US government sees fit for us to see. They conveniently forget to mention it was the CIA who trained him and his original followers to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Reagan years. They also don't bother mentioning that we've spent an order of magnitude more money in Iraq than we have trying to find bin Laden.
Which one had something to do with 9/11 again?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Or some lacky with the morals of a political prostitute might decide to keep tabs on who their political opponents are calling on a regular basis. Or detail the grassroots network in a particular area and send their buddies in the FBI out to intimidate them.
I am sick and fucking tired of our government spending billions to spy on Americans instead of sending some steely-eyed mofo's out to whack terrorists in their own back yard. The Republicans are the most foul, corrupt, incompetent bunch that this country has ever seen in power. I'm disgusted.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/domestic_spying;_ylt=Al tzCvZmCXzQ.QsFg5wYT2Os0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBH NlYwN0bQ--
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Thu May 11, 6:59 AM ET
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.
"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.
"Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."
Roehrkasse noted the OPR's mission is not to investigate possible wrongdoing in other agencies, but to determine if Justice Department lawyers violated any ethical rules. He declined to comment when asked if the end of the inquiry meant the agency believed its lawyers had handled the wiretapping matter ethically.
Hinchey is one of many House Democrats who have been highly critical of the domestic eavesdropping program first revealed in December. He said lawmakers would push to find out who at the NSA denied the Justice Department lawyers security clearance.
"This administration thinks they can just violate any law they want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with that. It's up to us to stand up to them," said Hinchey.
In February, the OPR announced it would examine the conduct of its own agency's lawyers in the program, though they were not authorized to investigate NSA activities.
Bush's decision to authorize the largest U.S. spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification.
The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.
Separately, the Justice Department sought last month to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing the telephone company AT&T of colluding with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
The lawsuit, brought by an Internet privacy group, does not name the government as a defendant, but the Department of Justice has sought to quash the lawsuit, saying it threatens to expose government and military secrets.
___
On the Net:
Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility: http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/index.html
National Security Agency: http://www.nsa.gov/home_html.cfm
Go read the Puzzle Palace for an interesting history of the NSA. The NSA was always allowd to operate and spy in the USA. It is nothing new.
Actually, I read the Puzzle Palace, as well as "Body of Secrets", the follow-up book by James Bamford. Here is what this book says on the subject (page 440-441, 1st Edition, published in May 2001, if you have to know):
"Among the reforms to come out of the Church Committee investigation was the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [...] In order for NSA to target an American citizen or permanent resident alien -- a green card holder -- within the United States, a secret warrant must be obtained from the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] court. To get the warrant, the NSA officials must show that the person they wish to target is either an agent of a foreign power or involved in espionage or terrorism. But because these issues fall under the jurisidction of the FBI within the United States the NSA seldom becomes involved. Thus, according to senior U.S. intelligence official involved in Sigint, NSA does not target Americans at home." (Emphasis mine).
Therefore, contrary to what you just posted, NSA is allowed to spy on American citizens, but only after getting a court warrant. The fact that the NSA is spying right now on American citizens -- without obtaining this warrant -- should be more than enough reason to impeach the current President of the United States, as well as prosecute USAF General Hayden, the former NSA Director who authorized this program, and who is now the new CIA director.
Somehow, I don't think this is going to happen.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
The metric shouldn't be whether or not the current administration/government officials/law enforcement officials (etc) are abusing power and invading privacy, but rather whether or not any given power can be abused and what oversight exists to protect the rights of the innocent (or the accused) in the case that such abuse happens.
Absolutely. Even if someone is a die-hard Republican who trusts the party religiously and believes that no wrongdoing has ever been done by the administration, they need to consider the possibility that the tools and powers established over the last 6 years may someday be in the hand of a Democrat president. For all the conservatives out there, picture Hillary Clinton with unlimited wiretapping and information access.
I can't figure out for the life of me why all the Republicans I knew in the 90s who were vehemently opposed to government intrusion into people's private lives are so very fucking eager to open the doors now. Was it 9/11? Did they get scared, are they that weak that they're hoping for any piece of illusionary safety they can scrabble up? The more cynical part of me says no, it's because all the branches of the government are controlled by Republicans now, and they want more power for their guys.
The complete and total lack of oversight, and additionally the strident opposition to any kind of oversight of control, is very troubling. Take the FISA warrants issue. There is one judge who approves FISA warrants. He's had this job for years. He has a security clearance higher then God. He barely ever turns down a warrant request, somthing like over 90 percent are approved. This judge is on call 24/7, and has signed warrant requests in his pajamas. If the government doesn't want to wait for a warrant, they can go ahead and wiretap on a target, if they think it's really really urgent, and they have 3 fucking days to go and get the warrant after the fact. They have the ability to essentially get the warrant to search the house after they've searched it. How much easier could it be? It's not like the administration never used or obtained FISA warrants either, they used it lots, so it's not like they were opposed to the program as a whole or somehow unaware of it.
What that means is one of two things. Either the people doing the wiretapping were lazy, and didn't want to get a warrant, or they were doing something blatantly illegal and a blatant abuse of power, like spying on completely innocent people for political reasons during an election campaign or something similar, and didn't want anyone to know about it. Even if it's just laziness, I'm not happy about it, I don't want the defenders of the country to be too lazy to do their job right.
that was longer than expected, but a rant felt necessary
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
You know what really bothers me? The notion that some things need to be kept secret -- that, if I, a person not intrinsically different from any of the lying, frightened people in the Bush Administration, knew what they knew, I would simply freak out and ruin the fucking world. I'm fucking sick of our government doing whatever it fucking wants every single day of the god-damned week. Do I live in the United States? I don't even fucking know. I know I live somewhere, and on the news every day I see shit that makes me feel terrible inside. And then someone says that our president - our government, our military aggression - did it. What does it mean to have a country? What does it mean when leadership apparently means that someone wins the vote lottery, and they then get to do everything they've always personally wanted? Being the president shouldn't mean that you get the golden ticket into Willy Wonka's factory, where the walls are made of chocolate, and everyone who isn't like you is turned into an enemy. They should replace the White House with a fucking treehouse. There is no dignity, no service, no honor in that building. It's a bunch of people who fight with every single other god-damned person on the planet . There is no agreement, no consensus, no respect. And that's exactly what I see in this story: zero fucking respect for the ability for people to live their own lives, make their own decisions, and know what is good and right for themselves.
And the ironic thing is, the closer you look - the more introspection you do - the more difficult it is to say what is good for yourself. If you actually feel your upsetness and consider why you're upset about things, rather than immediately fighting any emotion you don't like (which is what most people do most of the time, I believe), you realize that what feels so real to you now is merely something you believe because someone pounded it into your head as a child. And every time you do this - every time you take a piece out of that armor you wear every day - you get a glimpse of what life is like when lived naturally. And that life is a life without fighting, yet without fear. It's a life where, usually, compassion simply means understanding and not interfering. You realize that the desire to control things is simply your childhood fear of abandonment and abuse, and that there is no way you can control anything. And that's infinitely okay, because you also realize that life, lived naturally, is love. Being the President changes none of this. He does bad things because he's screwed up. It's as simple as that. Just like any one of us, when he hurts people, he does it out of fear and misunderstanding. And just like any of us, he's doing the best he believes he can. But I don't want him in office. I want someone who understands what life is about.
Government should be about teamwork. And teamwork is never about figuring out what's "right." When you're in a team, you have to let go of everything you want. Just let it go. When the time comes, you will be able to suggest things to the group, who then will either endorse or question your suggestion. And you'll be able to have true creativity, because your mind will not be tied to any particular outcome. If your mind is tied to an outcome, you are not really a member of a team; you're just fighting. The output of a team is whatever the team can come up with that they think is the best job they could do to benefit everyone the solution is targeted at. The important thing is not the fidelity between the solution and your original fantasy. Anyone who has been in this situation knows the deep, heavy regret and aggression that precipitate from realizing this is what happened. No, what is most important in a team is the team itself. If the team can't be friends, then the team has failed. In this respect, the solution produced by the team doesn't matter -- and in a way, that's true. Because if you're angry in a team, then everything you experien
It's called THE OTHER CANDIDATE.
You mean Kodos?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
..and what happens when this reaches you in your future country? Running away does not solve the problem so much as it delays it.
Change will come.. this I am sure of. There are people in this country that do still believe in the constitution. They simply need to be awakened.
Heed these words, my friend.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
Answer: "Anytime we want to."
Perhaps democracy is really flawed at the core. IF it is supposed to work then this is the goverment the people want and therefore they don't want all that nonsense of innocent until proven guilty and due process. OR if democracy don't work then it is all just a costly sham to cover up you are living in a dictatorship.
Anyone know exactly how do you start a revolution. Perhaps I should make some calls. Oh wait a minute, someone is at the doo..[CONNECTION DROPPED]
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Please speak directly into the flowerpot, sir...
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You must have meant Mike Badnarik because that poodle Kerry would have us all reading from the Quran by now.
The fact that you think Kerry would have been worse than the nightmare we've got now speaks volumes. Nice try at showing your "libertarian" side, though.
Liberals like to label themselves progressives which would be correct, progressively stupid and a progressive loss of common sense. They're more like brain dead zombies with a sense of entitlement instead of hard working folk. They want money form people who earn it to pass it on to health care for self abusers and aids patients for a totally preventable condition.
If you can manage to get one more strawman into your paragraph, you'll be in the running for the "sheeple of the week" award. I'm a libertarian and a registered Republican, but right-wingers like you and others who won't or can't think for themselves, have let this country be turned into a police state.
Wasn't being a Republican all about less government? So where's the less government already? Massively expanded police powers? Check. Continued full frontal assault on civil liberties? Check. Dissent == helping the terrorists? Check.
Your guy has done enough damage. If you've travelled anywhere around the world, you know that "Land of the free" is already a bad joke. Unless this country gets some serious repair, and quick, you won't be allowed to leave when you finally realize how much you've lost. "Papers please!"
Ross
I never said that fighting the war on terrorism would require the creation of "a police state." Nor did I suggest that we are already living in a police state, although you seem fairly quick to want me to say that - perhaps it's easier to label me a wild-eyed hippie freak than to, you know, actually address the thing that I said. Which was essentially this:
I didn't call Alberto Gonzales a fascist, or Bush a liar, and I haven't called for Rumsfeld to be fired. (See my earlier point about creating a strawman.)
What I did say was that the administration has claimed repeatedly that Congress does not have the legal authority to regulate any aspect of the administration's intelligence gathering operation. That's not name calling, it's fact: FISA clearly and unambiguously lays out the framework for conducting certain kinds of surveillance, and the administration has flat out said that it doesn't need to abide by those rules. I'm not demonizing the administration, I'm quoting them, and if you think I'm exaggerating you should actually read the memorandums and testimony from Gonzales and Yoo. I leave googling that testimony as an exercise for the reader.
I'll be the first to admit that polls are flawed. If you choose to believe that this is because of a media conspiracy on the part of the NYT, CNN, and the rest of what's often called the "liberal media," fine. But I think that even you would have a hard time arguing that Fox News is biased towards the left, and even they are showing anemic poll numbers for the president. The reason I brought the poll numbers about the censure issue up in the first place is because you asserted that a "great silent majority" of American citizens sided with you on this issue: I can only assume you called them silent because of their failure to speak up in polls like this one.
As for whether or not this is a "mindless partisan rant," I leave it to the readers of Slashdot to decide for themselves which one of us is trying to make this into a partisan issue. But in the interest of disclosure: I think it's the one who implied that I'm a "narcissist" and a "loonie."
Here is the kicker though, are you ready?
This is the NSA doing this.
Why is this important?
Well, in 1952, the NSA was formed to spy on foreign governments.
From the NSA's original charter: "The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto. As used in this directive, the terms "communications intelligence" or "COMINT" shall be construed to mean all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications other than foreign press and propaganda broadcasts and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than intended recipients, but shall exclude censorship and the production and dissemination of finished intelligence." (emphasis added).
Domestic surveillance, on U.S. soil of U.S. citizens is new territory for the spooks. Do Constitutaionl rules apply? Who knows. You could be picked up based on NSA-gathered info and end up in Gitmo or worse, and no one would ever know. THAT's the real story and begs the obvious question, why not leave this to the FBI? Probably because such a program would be subject to, oh, I dont know... due process of law.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Quoting USA Today:
So: the NSA asks for a massive database of call records, not limited to a specific group of people, without a warrant. Qwest asks them to please take it to the FISA court. The NSA refuses on the grounds that the FISA court might say no. (Note: the approval rate for FISA requests is signfigantly higher than 99%.)
As I said. The current administration simply does not want to be constrained by the rule of law.
...you're not the only one. Take a look: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12729893/
t _d_eisenhower.html/
My political principles, if this were the 90s, would be a mix of Democrat and Republican and I would feel fairly comfortable labelling myself a liberterian and not sweating it. However, the things I liked about the Republicans, like fiscal responsibility, a strong military, and fierce protection of privacy, have all been thrown to the winds. Believe me, funneling billions of dollars into fat cat contractors and wearing down our servicemembers in conflict after conflict does not make a strong military. Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex, saying "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Eisenhower said a lot of smart stuff, check it out: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/dwigh
"Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America."
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war."
"Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose."
"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."
"Only Americans can hurt America."
And a personal favorite,
"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
Wish I'd been around for him.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
The political strategy of Karl Rove, is to use the compliant media - absolutely DESPERATE for any kind of controversial story to sell ad space, increase revenue, to spread the word about any kind of dirt on the man everyone loves to hate; George W Bush.
Everyone loves to hate him, because he's a fuckup. And he's stinking filthy rich, never worked for it. The absolute antithesis of epicurianism. He drives liberals fucking crazy, because he's everything a liberal hates.
So he creates a little story about something related to something that Bush has done, only he makes it look illegal, when technically, due to some obscure loophole or conservative interpretation of law or the constitution, it's actually legal. And he calls up his buddies in the press, the Judy Millers, the Chris Mathews, etc. and says - hey, have I got a story for you - (or one of your more liberal friends in the same media organization) - however he gets it going.
What do you think "10 million phone conversations recorded a day" (oops, I mean 10 million pen-registers a day) means? It means that what Bush is doing - based on the PATRIOT ACT, is technically legal. The So-Called Liberal media has been swatting at Bush madly all day long, and pundits are furiously describing speeches he made where he talked about obeying the law wrt court orders and such. I'm certain that the timing of this story has something to do, as well, with the Goss resignation and Hayden appointment, given Hayden's stewardship of this NSA program. Too much coincidence.
So the point of all this is - Rove feints with a "fake" Bush is evil story. The Liberals scream and yell, and over react. They can't help it - they've been given incomplete, if not false information. It brews and bubbles for a few days, or weeks, or months, then the FULL story with all the facts get out, and the Liberals end up losing the argument, and looking like asses.
Remember Rathergate? We all thought we finally had the proof that Bush was a deserter. Until the proof turned out to be a forgery. Who forged it? (My guess: Rove) Where's the REAL evidence that he was or was not a deserter? (My guess: Shredded decades ago, duh!) What was the final outcome? (Dan Rather, Liberal media Icon resigns in disgrace - noone dares question Bush's military service ever again in serious public debate).
Remember Plamegate? Bush SAID he would fire the leaker. We were all hoping that that meant, Cheney would be fired, or Libby would be fired, or Karl Rove would be fired. Then after a very costly investigation, an indictment which is explained away as "bad memory" (remember Iran-Contra?) and then the TRUTH finally comes out: BUSH is the leaker - because he de-classified Plame. Technically legal. The outcome? Bush still got his war, Libby's case will probably be dismissed, or he'll be pardoned - G.Gordon Liddy spent time behind bars for his Watergate Role, and he's making buttloads on the talk-show and book-signing circuit. And Liberals are "technically wrong" again, because technically, Bush didn't break the law.
This whole NSA scandal thing sounds exactly the same. Huge controversey made over a story that is changing every time we hear about it. Public debate rages over whether he has the right to do this (when "this" isn't even really defined yet), or whether we have a right to question during a "war", (whether or not you agree on the premise, execution, or whether we're technically at "war"). In the end, I'm afraid we're going to find out that what Bush is doing, is technically legal (or if it's illegal, those facts will never become known) - and that a lot of Liberal pundits, and moderate conservatives, or even hard conservatives who have lost faith, are going to look like chumps, and congress will end up even MORE impotent and irrelevant, and Bush will have more clout to do whatever he wants.
Some people think that this rove-a-dope tactic is a demonstration of Karl Rove's "evil genius". I disagree. People are gullible. They still trust the media. Th
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.