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NSA Had Domestic Call Monitoring Before 9/11?
MarkusQ writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?" From the article: "...an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee."
Oh shit.
James Bamford in his book Body of Secrets and in his numerous interviews with the press defended the NSA and said they really did change their ways after the scandals of the 1970s (telegram interception). Could it be that there never was a period of "gentlemanly spying" between then and September 11?
So you tell me that it wasn't about the terrorists? I can't believe it.
"Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?"
Of course the so-called "War on Terror" is just an excuse! Before the illegal
invasion of Iraq, no terrorist groups were based there, but look now! This
was widely expected to happen. So the current Administration has increased, not
reduced, the risk of Americans to be victims of terrorists.
Hmmm. I wonder how many ACs we'll get commenting on this topic. I hope you all bounced through a couple of proxies first!
I'm also curious if the mainstream news media will pick this article and run with it. If for no other reason, I want to see the Daily Show and Colbert's take on it.
The word of the day? Pre-emptive strike.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Don't tell me you are surprised by this... I am not.
After all Echelon has been around much longer so this was only to be expected to happen.
The scary thing however is that it took so long to get out. Makes you wonder what else they have in hiding...
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - Carl Sagan
Alright so besides the point that call monitoring is unconstitutional, if they had it 7 months before 9/11, then why did 9/11 still happen?
Idiot or not, you're still an idiot.
Before the illegal invasion of Iraq
Illegal according to what law? You know that when they are attacking other countries they are not required to obey the laws in that country.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Maybe it's just me here but in every paranoid guy's head this is going to come across as "They knew, they just let it happen". I hate to buy into conspiracy theories and I really don't believe any of the 9/11 ones. But two and two wasn't making four yesterday and now it seems closer to six at least in my head.
I just hope I get to live untill I'm 80 with my mind still intact, then I can see all the evidence from this bullshit as stuff is released in Britian and maybe even see some things from the US if a government with some balls and not just childish wargames in mind comes into power.
I like muppets.
I have NO doubt that our government was just doing the prudent thing. 9/11 is proof that it was necessary. You guys are just too cynical.
It could be said that the Bush Administration had this planned as a part of 9/11....
Why the .... state the date as seven months before 11th of september 2001? It would be so much simpler and easier to understand if you just say since 11th of february 2001. Now if I want to know how long time before or after some arbitrary date it is, I can compute that myself. For example it could as well have been stated as sixteen months and four days after 7th of october 1999, but I can do that computation myself if I want to.
I would only hope the government is trying to see who the bad guys are calling.
Evidently, every law abiding citizen in the United States.
May the Maths Be with you!
...Welcome to the world of ECHELON, the world-wide surveillance system.
The EU recommends European citizens use cryptography in all communications to protect them from commercial theft and invasion of privacy, of which ECHELON is suspected of doing. But this advice really applies to everyone, as UK intercepts communications on behalf of the US, and visa versa, to avoid the constitutionally illegal act of spying on ones own citizens, although this in itself has recently emerged as a bit of a legal grey-area.
FBI tried to install their carnivore boxes months before 9/11. After the attack the providers didn't question this anymore - but some agreed even before 9/11.
President Bush's major legal defense for the NSA call database was that the resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001 authorizing military force against those that caused 9/11 and organizations that aided those that caused 9/11 was a declaration of war. When the Democrats voted for that resolution, and then the resolution to go to war with Iraq, both times they enacted the President's war powers embedded by statute in FISA.
Check FISA at Cornell University and you see statutes giving the President to use pen registers and trap and trace devices. If you didn't know, those things constitute the technology used to record numbers a phone has been dialing, and numbers that have called a phone. They also give the President the power to search and seize without a warrant and to use electronic surveillance without a warrant. Here is the exact statute. There are three identical sections with "electronic surveillance," "pen register or trap and trace device," and "search and seizure" being replaced by the other in each one.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize the use of a pen register or trap and trace device without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by Congress.
Even then, the statute may be interpreted many ways. "for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days" could mean that the authorization must be repeated every 15 days, that individual authorizations may last no longer than 15 days, that the power lasts 15 days once the President has used it, that the power may only be used for 15 days after Congress has declared war, or any number of interpretations, many more plausible than others.
It depends on to what extent your judicial interpretation philosophy incorporates "originalism," thinking about what Congress intended, "starre decisis," looking at prior court decisions, and "strict constructionism," which limits judicial interpretation to the meanings of the actual words and phrases used in law, and not on other sources or inferences.
There was a huge debate over whether the authorizations of military force constituted declarations of war for the reasons given above. The Democrats, they say, did not mean to give the President war powers and thought that the authorizations did not constitute declarations of war because they had been used as a means of allowing deployment of armed forces without giving the president war powers since at least the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed an "escalation of military forces" in the Vietnam War. The Republicans mock them for this, and the debate was even brought up in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld if you watch the oral arguements on C-SPAN like I did.
For all this, how much has this of President Bush's arguements been brought up in the mainstream media? I have seen 2 paragraphs in an Associated Press article and nothing more. Regardless of the debate being all worthless now that he is discovered perhaps to have begun the program before 9/11, the debate is something I feel needs to be known. Just don't berate the Democrats for wanting to debate whether the Iraq War's a war. If the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been a declaration of war giving Richard Nixon wiretapping powers, the Supreme Court would not have ruled against him in East District of Michigan v. Nixon.
A statute in FISA does not make a difference in constitutional law. President Bush wants the statutes to make legal what he does with no regard to the Constitution, but when statutes prohibit his actions, he can cite constitutional authority. If it's legally a war, he'd say it's the first case, and if it's not he'd say it's the other.
This apparent legal paradox has arisen in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld---if he's a POW he's under the Geneva Convention, and if not he's a criminal entitled to a trial. The Bush administration argues he's not a POW because he was not fighting for an organized g
I like how people keep saying "in the months before 9/11". As if these programs were instituted by der furher the day he was inaugurated. The truth is that these programs have been going on for years but none of you cared.
1. Carnivore first hit slashdot during the Clinton Administration. The oldest reference I found on slashdot is about Earthlink refusing to install it in 2000 - which means it had been in development for several years before that.
2. The legendary "Echelon" - the NSA program for monitoring all telecom traffic has been bandied about for many years - Slashdot posted several articles about it in May of 1999 but the news about it first broke in 1998. The program itself is probably 50 years old.
Clear, Dark Skies
It's always funny to see how fast and furious the -1 Moderations come to the posts that don't agree with the slashdot groupthink.This comment doesn't come close to the definition of flamebait, according to the Slashdot FAQ.
You might not agree with the comment, but it is a valid and ontopic post that deserves to get read. Or do the moderators fear viewpoints that don't agree?
Meanwhile, another post that calls the President a dictator, and mocks the US as Land of the Free is +5 insightful.
This system is truly broken.
There's just no way that steel office towers just happen to implode for no reason. I think if you go back, this all starts with Enron. Apparently Cheney's Energy Task force was going to make Lay the Secretary of the Energy Department. In order to prevent leaks of that meeting, national wiretapping was essential and then to cover the wiretapping a new Pearl Harbor was invented. The hijackers thought they were taking part in a drill. That's why they were so indiscrete about shooting off their mouths before 911 went down.
The operation was legal? The operation was planned because its not to much of a stretch from other operations from the last 30 years?
Instead of gasping about how they *planned to do this horrible thing* even *before* 9/11 like a little school girl you should go out and work on the political side that made this even possible. Instead of railing against Bush for using the tools at his disposal you should work on modifying those tools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvqVTXpnjYg/ , nuf said.
Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in New York City, along with two of the other terrorists. I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal agency to proceed.
Rep. Weldon later reiterated these concerns during a news conferences on February 14, 2006. He stated that Able Danger identified Mohamed Atta 13 separate times prior to 9/11 and that the unit also identified a potential problem in Yemen two weeks prior to the attack on the USS Cole in October, 2000. The Pentagon released a statement in response to Rep. Weldon, stating they wished to address these issues during a congressional hearing before the House Armed Services Committee scheduled for Wednesday, February 15, 2006.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger
I think we had a smallish inkling that something was going to happen. I can't be sure how much of this was "hey if there's an attack we get more power" and how much was "Don't want a lawsuit, so CYA". Both seem equally plausible to me.
There should be laws against our leaders lying to the public, uh, oh yeah, there are. It's just ignored by emporer George. At least we know his Dad is not proud of him.
Look, one of the first things GWB did was sign a presidential order which locks away his Slick Willie's and Daddy Bush's. Organizations are like large celestial bodies:
there are two broad classes -- stars and black holes. Stars illuminate, organizations can pour information forward. Blackholes leak little and suck in everything within reach.
The PO securing presidential records was simply the first sign that a singularity had formed in the Oval Office. Ordering the NSA to spie on us (yup 'mericentric) only follows logically.
I hope you do feel safe while the last of your freedoms is taken from you. Freedom of speach this is. The real reason for such monitoring is to supress political dissent. You see a monitored populace is a complient one.
davecb5620@gmail.com
No, he's not.
Neither is ignorance nor selective recall.
If you don't understand why something has happened how can you correct it?
Clear, Dark Skies
I take it you just arrived here from another planet. Of course its an excuse.. Its what governments do by nature.
Welcome to Earth, i hope you enjoy your stay.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do you remember Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness proposal that came out shortly after 9/11? A gigantic database that aggregated all available electronic information on US citizens -- financial and credit card records, grocery store shopper cards, movie rentals, library books, maybe even medical records? And how people raised such a stink that congress cut off funding for it?
Well, guess what. It's still up and running.. It simply moved over to the pentagon, that's all.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
ok, so since that was entirely domestic this program wouldn't have helped there, but you get the point).
/. I'm too lazy to RTFA, but the headline says "domestic call monitoring". Why would you then conclude that it would be ineffective against domestic terrorism but effective against international terrorism?
Well, since this is
Anyway, 'terrorism' (both domestic and Islamic) weren't a significant problem before 9-11 and they aren't a significant problem today, despite what the 6 o'clock news wants you to believe. Murder takes the lives of many more people (as in several orders of magnitude) per year. Suicide takes 4x more than murder, and car accidents take over 5x more. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and smoking-related respitory diseases together claim over 200x the lives that murder claims (which is itself claims several orders of magnitude more lives than terrorism.)
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances, and ruthlessly and indiscriminately monitoring law-abiding American citizens (incidentally, none of the 9-11 terrorists were American citizens) will give us nothing but another step towards a police state.
Good thing Bush and co. had that 'homeland security' system going all the way back then to protect us from terrorism.
Oh...
Wait
Well, obviously, the program needs (n+2) years of operation to actually FULLY protect us. (where n = current year - year program 'started')
It means that they knew about 9-11 before it happened. Mossad knew, and you can bet NSA was monitoring Mossad:
w =0
http://www.sundayherald.com/37707
They started monitoring domestic calls about the time Cheney had his oil task force meeting, about the time the planning of the Iraq invasion started (Jan 2001).
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=417&ro
They already knew Iraq had sarin and other ancient pre-1991 WMD's because the US gave Saddam these weapons. A certain photograph of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands comes to mind. There was a concerted effort a couple of weeks ago by Republicans in Congress to promote these ancient and non-functional weapons as "OMG the WMD's! Take that liberals!!"
That would have been somewhere around February, 2001. What else was going on around that time?
I'm trying to think really hard about this. Early 2001... what important development took place in early 2001?
Gosh, I'm at a loss here. Maybe someone else can help out.
You could actually have your cake then eat it. The maxim is You can't eat your cake and have it too because you can't have your cake after it's been eaten.
What's the insight in the sentence "Oh shit"?
It certainly is not constitutional by "all accounts", unless you dismiss contradictory accounts out of hand, or have very peculiar ideas about what "constitutional" means.
Advovates of expanded executive power like to talk about the President as "Commander in Chief", as if this were somehow a superior and broader function than the Presidency; and they like to talk about the President's "inherent powers". Some countries do have a system in which they elect dictators with practically unlimited powers, but not us.
The president's "inherent" powers are very few. It's a queer term in any case; no president I can think of ever used it before the present one, although Nixon did unsuccessfullly use the grounds of "Executive Privilege" to try to hide evidence of his wrongdoing in the Watergate affair. It would be more correct to describe most of the president's powers, not as "inherent" but "contingent". "Contingent Power" seems like a contradition in terms to some, but even the classic paradigm of power invested in the president can be seen as contingent: the power to take extraordinary actions while defending the country against invasion.
For example, the executive branch might comandeer property in the heat of battle. But it cannot raise taxes to support the defense. In both cases we're talking about siezing private property; the difference is that it's a practical impossibilty to vote on what goes on in battle, but a system of taxation necessarily inolves so much coordination that clearly Congress can be consulted.
And that's the rub. It's possible for the same action (siezing property in our example) to be constiutional or unconstitutional depending on specific circumstances. It also follows that by changing circumstances, we can change the scope of the president's "inherent" powers.
And thus, we have FISA.
Many of the things convered by FISA would fall into what we'd think of the president's "inherent" powers of defense. However, FISA does two things. First, it regulates the scope and manner in which the President exercises those powers. The president is not above the law; in the heat of battle he may stretch it or even break it with some excuse, but he certainly has no power to allocate funds to a program which flies in the face of it. Secondly, it provides mechanisms of accountability which are practical for the President to use in cases where it was impractical before. And this bears on the theory of "inherent powers". In cases where the President once could simply decide to intercept a private person's communications, he must now get a FISA warrant. The existence of the FISA mechanism, particularly the ability to get retroactive warrants, means it's no longer enough to brief congress in the time and manner you see fit. Nor is it in the power of the Congressional leadership to bless this as "legal" without changing the law.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
espo
The President, The Vice President, and their legal advisors Yoo and Addingtion do not place the office of the Presidency above the law. What they argue is that the law is below the office of the Presidency.
Most of you act like a bunch of educated imbeciles on this site. What are you proving? NOTHING! It's obvious that all of this was going on in front of your eyes, nothing was hidden. Look at the NSA's TRAILBLAZER project, and the GROUNDBREAKER project. The signs were smacking you right in the face. Also, what about your ISPs forcing you to use their SMTP servers? Don't you think that was because of an agreement with the government?
Just let the NSA and other agencies do their job, PROTECT YOUR SORRY ASSES! If you work in Corporate America, you assume there is no privacy in the workplace. Why do you accept that, where you can get in trouble for the slightest policy violation. Then turn around and cry about the NSA monitoring phone calls and emails, and not get in trouble unless you are a drug lord or terrorist. It's time to grow up and stop wasting precious hard drive space with your complaints!
Right after 9/11, I distinctly remember some lowly government official talking about them going through the recordings of cell phone conversations from flight 93. There was a lot of media and government confusion at the time and the media would talk to any government official they could and the feds hadn't quite gotten their lines of communication straight. I immediatly remember thinking "They've been recording cell phone conversations?!?!?!?" I was incredibly shocked to hear that, but I can't for the life of me remember what news show it was.
This happened within a few days after 9/11 and I wish I could remember the program, because at the time it seemed to be an incredible statement.
Does anyone know what program / source I'm talking about? Surely such a damning piece of evidence must have been noticed by someone other than me. I've always been mad at myself for not making note of the source when I heard it.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
And the answer is "no". Any system will have "false positives", "false negatives", "true positives" and "true negatives".
The "false negatives" mean you miss a plot. As long as the false negative rate is above a certain percentage of the actual plots, it will work.
More problematic is the "false positive" rate. This is when a non-plot is identified as a plot. Innocent people are investigated. This takes time / money / effort.
Given that there is an upper limit on the time / money / effort available, the government will waste resources chasing false leads.
People who do not understand that will look at the extreme rarity of "terrorist attacks" in the US (try to name 5 attacks in the US in the last 100 years without using Google) and conclude that the time / money / effort spent was successful.
However, looking at the budget, you will see that our government is BORROWING the money.
We are going bankrupt in an attempt to chase down a threat that kills fewer people every year than car accidents.
And we are surrending the Rights that our forefathers were willing to give THEIR lives for.
The naturally occuring "false positives" would eat up the budget for the program (under any sane spending plan).
With almost 300 million people
1% false positives mean 3 million people investigated (and the people they know)
0.1% means 300,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
0.01% means 30,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
Now, even if you limit each investigation to just that person and the 5 closest people to him/her
Spying does not work randomly.
...to let things happen. Prosecutors present a scenario to the jury when a case is tried in court. This scenario may or may not be 100% accurate, but it is usually the best explanation thta "fits the facts" of the case at hand. The charges that they present against the defendant describe the crimes comitted in the scenario they are presenting to the jury. Seldom does a conspiracy come before a jury and for good reason. If we examine the facts surrounding the Bush Administration and it's interaction with the events of 9-11, I do not see a conspiracy -and I feel that this is probably the most corrupt administration since J. Q. Adams. The scenarion I'd be pr3esenting to a jury is "dereliction of duty" with the intent to further it's own power in the aftermath of an attack on American soil by Islamic terrorists. In my mind, the scenario plays out somewhat along the lines of a few select people within the administration looking at the evidence (before the attacks) dismissing it as inconclusive, and secretly, among themselves, thinking that "this COULD play into our hands." I suspect that, even knowing that something might be about to happen, the administration was as shocked a the rest of America on that September morning, but that the ball had been set in motion: all that they could do was to take advantage of the attack as they had already planned. They may have counted on -at most- a few hundred dead IF the attack were for real, but the reality of 9-11 was far worse than they had considered. The evidence is there: pre-attack intelligence that was dismissed far too speedily, Bush's own reaction at the school that morning, and the way they wandered the counrty aimlessly, the contingency plans that were already in place, the seemingly deliberate lack of action on their part.... Does the fact that I consider this to be a poissibility make me a conspiracy theorist? I don't see a conspiracy, but I do see a plausible case of criminal negligence and think that it should be investigated. The current evidence that the Administration was making a power grab before 9-11 only bolsters the case that they may have comitted a crime as desribed...
So they had monitoring before 9/11, too? Wow it was really effective. Let's put some more time and energy into wiretapping and monitoring of the American people because it's provent to be so effective up to this point. Not to mention 100% legal.
If Bush would be convicted as a war criminal by hague, he would avoid traveling to foreign countries after his presidency would be over and it would probably affect the future elections in America.
The real question would be that which effect would be bigger, democrats saying fuck you to hague, or republicans turning away from the war criminals and their party.
©God
Kofi Annan ... In some parts of the world, leaders lead from a position of moral authority
And it's exactly Kofi Annan's willingness to treat despots and terrorists with the same deference that he reserves for the elected governments of democracies that strips him of any moral authority. It's his completely luke-warm, moreally rudderless handling of stunning UN-facilitated corruption in things like the Iraq oil-for-food program that indicate what a moral relativist he is. It's not "moral authority," it's classic, ineffectual political correctness writ larger than any warm-and-fuzzy campus activist could ever hope.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yes, thank God that Iraq weren't interested in acquiring nuclear (nu-lick-le-ar) power when the Reagan(?) administration tried to push it on them.
The meetings from that period have a young-looking Donald Rumsfeld who I believe was an aide in the Reagan government. How attitudes can change.
There's obviously plenty of documentation on this, and some interesting memoirs from an old, wise (and very left-wing) politician called Tony Benn in the UK, who was a cabinet member at the time, and as such had pretty high-level access.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Any suggestions?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Pres. Clinton tasked the NSA with monitoring of domestic to domestic phone calls by executive order after the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1990s in an effort to combat "militias" and other domestic terror groups. It was common knowledge, widely reported, and much maligned at the time. Monitoring of all domestic to international communications has been in effect since the start of the coldwar.
Why is this such a big deal now? Granted its unnerving, but Bush did not start it. Remember Al Gore's "Clipper" chip? Federally mandated and designed encryption with built in backdoors and key escrow.
The reality is the US will move toward a system of complete video and electronic surveilance of its citizens similar to what is in place in the UK. It will include laws that either outlaw encryption, demand keys escrow or make it a crime to withhold keys. The US will also move to a system of internet monitoring similar to China. No government gives up power, and if it sees other governments, especially democratic Euro governments, with more it will move to adopt the same powers.
Bush is "trying to protect us from mass murderers", when he responds to the Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" with the words "All right, you've covered your ass, now" and went fishing on his Texas estate?
No, he's attacking us while leaving us undefended, while Bush worshippers like you cover his ass.
Like when you lie about FISA, the law that prohibits Bush from wiretapping any call including a US person without a court order. Which he did, which he continues to do, which he has publicly insisted he will do - all in violation of the law. The law, BTW, that was passed after Rumsfeld, Cheney and their cronies spied on us in their first attack, during the Nixon administration, then made stronger by Clinton in the 1990s, to cover physical searches as well as wiretaps.
I've been watching this gang since the early 1970s. I watched them wage covert war in Iran/Contra in the 1980s. And I've watched them move from the fringes of the government to a takeover of all the branches. And I've watched people like you hurl lies to cover their attacks on our country. But I don't watch silently, and I don't think it's a joke. Because it's not funny.
--
make install -not war
Why do you assume he's so incompetent? Because of Iraq? They're building permanent bases there now. The growing civil war ensures that the current Iraqi contractor heaven continues for all forseable future. Was it 10 more years they said? It's all going as planned.
Ignoring security warnings? Google for "you covered your ass". They didn't ignore anything.
Because he talks funny? See this. And this.
us, they want to control us. They are trying very hard to speed up this totaltarianism. They want all the power and control over the people. George Bush's fair voting act is putting in place electronic voting machines in every state, its now illegal to whistleblow that a Diebold voting machine is hackable and could be used to fix an election. Haliburton got a $400 million contract to build Federal "Detention Centers" right after the 2000 election. Hundreds of thousands new federal beds that are currently setting empty while the prison system is overflowing. Couple that with things like spying on the polulace, it is starting to paint a very scary picture. WAKE UP. ITS NOT A BAD DREAM
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Regardless of your feelings on NSA wiretaps, both domestic and international - you already know what all of the commennnts on this story will look like. Why even bother? An article like this one simply meant to stir up feelings and add nothing new to the discussion would ina comment be marked "flamebait", so why not tag it as such?
To tag, simply click on that small triangle next to exiting tags. Below is a text entry box for your tag (flamebait), after entering simply press the "Tag" button next to it and your tag is added. If enough people use the same tag it makes the front page and helps people understand just what they are going to see in the comments inside.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We will now see Bush's media flacks spinning his bottomless hunger for spying on Americans by saying that "if we had gotten this program before 9/11/2001, we would have had what we needed to stop those terrorists".
Even though we of course had more than enough info and spying programs to catch and stop them. The FBI tried to stop the hijackers in flight school, but the FBI refused to act. One FBI whistleblower has been gagged for years because she's tried to tell too much about how badly broken is our counterterrorism system. Amidst mountains of intelligence, Bush has been unable to even find Bin Laden for longer than it took FDR and Truman to beat Germany and Japan in WWII.
We don't need more mountains of intelligence, especially spying on every American's every transaction. We need regime change to one that will actually protect us, the way we elected them and pay them to do. Every threat we've faced - terrorists, recession, hurricane, and smaller - has been bungled or worse by the Bush regime. Giving them more power is like giving the school bully a gun. They'll just pistol whip everyone to make stealing our lunch money that much more efficient.
--
make install -not war
No it's not just you. I suggest you do some extra research into those 9/11 "conspiracy theories", just to be safe. If you find out they are all crap, no harm done right?
That's just silly. We know he did have WMD, we know he wanted various WMD, the point is, did he have any WMD, and was he actively working towards getting any? The answer to both those questions is NO.
... which it turns out they were already hard at work doing.
Come on now, use that advanced primate brain to pretend for a second that you're back in 2003 and don't know what you magically know now, but did know what was right in front of your eyes. Things like:
He was equipping his troops with chemical suits, and had artillary battalions especially trained in handling "special" munitions. In 2003.
That the giant piles of Sarin, VX, and other nasties we know he had stockpiled could not be accounted for, and that he had his people making every possible effort to obstruct attempts to discover what happened to them - including, as the heat got really turned up with the umpteenth UN resolution, the delivery of a completely laughable "dossier" showing "everything" about their weapons programs, right down to blank CDs and binders full of, basically gibberish. Meanwhile, he was still assembling long-range missiles in direct violations of the agreements he signed, and continued to shoot at coaltion aircraft patrolling areas that included where he'd most recently stored such weapons.
Further, it's now apparent that Saddam's own weapons program peoplpe were lying to him about how much they had in the works or available, because his expectation was that he was holding onto more than was actually there. This drove much of his hightly evasive behavior - exactly what convinced every intelligence agency in the world that he had more stockpiled and under way than it turns out that he did.
But it doesn't matter what turns out to be the case, because that was enough of a risk. He was publicly sending money (along with press releases) to support suicide bombers in other countries (buying houses for Hamas killers, for example), regularly trafficking in weapons with North Korea and Syria, and in case you've forgotten, invaded Kuwait - and started lobbing long-range missiles into Israel as he was getting kicked back out. And because he utterly failed to abide by the terms of his surrender in that conflict, and persisted in continuing to appear to spending money on weapons and hiding activities all across Iraq, there wasn't a lot going towards giving him the benefit of the doubt - including his own threats.
And, of course, there's the fact that Saddam was allowing Al Queda-related people to set up camp in rural Iraq, giving medical treatment to known A-Q affiliates, and has been shown repeatedly to have had his intel people in "talks" with people in Taliban-infested Afghanistan. More documents describing those contacts and more is being translated daily. That's not to say that Saddam was in any way instrumental in 9/11, just that he was quite cozy with his enemies' enemies. Combine that with the cash he was skimming, the long-range missiles he was building right up until he was overthrown, his long-time history of aggression towards non-Tikritis, and you've got the scenario we had to contemplate, and act upon, back in 2003.
In the context of what happened since 9/11, and given the jihaddi quest for a new stomping ground, having lost their pet totalitarian regime in Afghanistan, a shaky, corrupt, and bristling Iraq that refused to abide by the terms they signed simply wasn't tolerable. Every UN resolution (including those that called for such extreme measures) that he violated was becoming a running joke, since one that literally said "and we're going to remove you from power" wasn't going to be signed by France and Russia, the two countries most benefitting from the oil-for-food scams and most hoping (oh, the irony) to capitalize on his eventual taming through profit-making sanctions
And no, you cannot argue that old, non-functioning weapons are the same as functional weapons
So, would you b
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Hmmm
Sorry to be pedantic, but Tony Benn was not a Cabinet member at the time that Rumsfield visited Iraq on behalf of the Reagan administration, Tony Benn was a Labour Member of Parliament. The Labour Government was voted out of office in 1979 and replaced by the Conservative Party.
a reichstagg like event, the evidence is *overwhelming*. That the high level "deciders and order givers" who were and are the coup plotters put into place a lot of bigbro activity and measures ahead of time just is logical from their POV. The US is now a total corporofascistic regime, and it will only get worse from here on out because they got away with it.
For those non-Brits who don't know who Tony Benn is:
He is a raving nutter and extreme leftie who was a minister under one of the most left wing government this country ever had and is best known for his support of Sinn Feinn, a mouthpiece organisation for Irish Republican terrorists and organised crime.
Tony Benn carries no weight with any political organisation or individual of any consequence, although he occasionally manages to get himself on television because producers can rely on him to say something provocative and/or stupid.
He may be old but he is certainly not wise and if he said "good morning" to me I'd check my watch. The man is widely regarded as an object of ridicule in the UK.
Yea, because those have worked so well in the past.
damaged by dogma
Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along
Of course. This was created to satisfy the extension of traditional telephone wiretapping requirements. You remember Carnivore and the related laws, right? No large Internet provider can cost-effectively satisfy a wiretapping subpoena for -only- the data requested. That filtering requires equipment vastly more powerful than the routers they use. I looks to me like AT&T cut a deal: We'll give you access to the total data stream but in return you agree that filtering for the lawfully authorized data is solely and permanantly the Federal government's problem and expense.
From the perspective of fiscal responsibility to the shareholders, its the right choice.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Hmmm
He may be of the left (I do not concede that he is of the extreme left), but Tony Benn is not a raving nutter. I agree that his political views carry very little weight with any of the mainstream political parties in the UK at the present time. As for your points about his support of Sinn Fein, yes he did support it, however the US used to allow Sinn Fein leaders into the country to do fund raising via Noraid...a fact conveniently forgotten by the US People & Politicians when talking about the War on Terror...however it has always been the case that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter (I am reminded of the time that Thatcher labeled Nelson Mandela as a terrorist).
Sinn Fein is a legitimate political party, IMHO Tony Benn was right in his insistence that the UK Government should enter into dialogue with them.
I certainly do not agree that Tony Benn is regarded as an object of ridicule here in the UK, whilst most people do not agree with his views, he is still regarded as being an honest politician and a nice person...
"people are dying on our highways because they're being stupid drivers,"
My sister was killed by a drunk driver whilst on the sidewalk you stupid insensitive shit. She was 15. Some people might deserve it but a hell of a lot don't.
So with this information and the Downing Street Memo that clearly showed the war was already planned when the president was publicly claiming it was the last option, what they heck is this guy going for? Why? And who stands to benefit from all this stuff?
Perhaps it's :
The Masons
Illuminati
Skulls & Bones
Trilateral Commission
Bilderberg Group
Neocons
Opus Dei (Heheh)
NSA
But seriously... who or what do people think Bush is working for and what evidence do they actually have?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
And you call yourselves geeks...
What could a call record contain?
If we look at an historical system like LORAN (Long Range Navigation)
which is used by boats to find their location worldwide we find that
it uses 3 very widely spaced antennas. Find your distance from antenna 1
by plotting the time difference as a circle. Draw the circle of that size
on a map. Do the same to antenna 2. Those circles intersect in at most 2
points. Now do it again with a third antenna and you have 1 point on the
globe. That's where you are. Within a few feet.
Ok. So your cell phone isn't very powerful (it's a small radio). So the
phone company has to install cell towers on 6 mile-ish centers to hear
your phone from at least 3 towers (3 bars) or 4 towers (4 bars). The cell
tower knows how far away you are so it can decide who is "the master" tower
that carries the traffic but several towers know that information. Plot the
distances. On 6 miles of terrain (instead of 600 miles of terrain like LORAN)
you can probably be plotted within inches.
Your cell phone calls out ever few minutes (place it on top of your TV and
listen for the noise) and tells the towers where it is. Likely, being a geek
it is on your hip. So the cell tower knows where you are at all times unless
the phone is off.
Off? Hmm. What could that mean? Off is a funny word, really. After all, you
assume that when you hang up the microphone is "off". But have you read the
source code for your cell phone? Will it respond to a remote signal to turn
the microphone on?
And even if the "off" button does turn off the transmitter it does seem rather
odd that the battery will keep a charge for a much longer time if you take it
out of the phone. Oh, right, the engineers can't design a circuit that has
enough resistance and leakage occurs. Plus it's not possible to put static
memory in a phone that would not require a battery so you burn up a battery
if it is off, right?
So if the cell phone "call database" happens to include the distance information
in a subfield your location could be plotted every few minutes. Thus even if a
newspaper reporter never called anyone it appears that his cell phone would tell
the world where he is. All you need to know is what other cell phones spent what
amount of time in the same location. And, clearly, if the microphones could be
made to turn on remotely why the possibilities are endless....
Of course, just because it is technically possible that doesn't mean anyone
actually does this....
Its impossible to cite perfect equivalent examples. It always opens one up for an attack of splitting hairs no matter how silly it may be.
The context was deaths per year. It was a valid point in that context. When things become ordinary or long term, you don't given them much consideration. Driving may get me killed (higher chance) and electing representatives that create blowback may also get me killed. In either case, my death may or may not be my fault over the spectrum of:
directly indirectly uninvolved
Naturally, the victims have a BIAS opinion; we need to stop falling for the appeal to emotion everytime victims act like we must take their position. Think of how many conflicts could be avoided if people were not influenced by an emotional victim crying for "justice"...
It does not matter if 99.99% agree with you, its bandwagon and not a valid argument. Now having a majority of valid experts is another matter..
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I strongly disagree with this assessment. Tony Benn has always appeared to me to be an individual of integrity, and one capable of calm and rational discourse. He is one of the most interesting politicians I have had the pleasure of meeting.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In other words, in all the things you listed (except murder), there was simple stupidity, bad luck, and poor lifestyle choices to blame.
...allow the terrorists to win. The only way to effectively fight terrorism is to fight the fear, don't let it take over your mindset, your freedoms, your society... keep living good lives, focus on PROMOTING GOOD instead of fighting evil even when it is painfully cost-ineffective. We improved our interagency communication, we beefed up our airline security, and we cracked down on immigrants who overstay their visa. That was it; that was all that was needed. Everything else is pointless at best and profoundly anti-American (assuming that word still has some fleeting connotations of freedom) at worst.
Yes but if tomorrow I get hit by a drunk driver, was that MY stupidity? Is it the fat kid's fault that his mom only feeds him McDonald's? Is it the asthmatic kid's fault that his parents refuse to stop smoking in the house? Initial anger aside, it isn't going to matter to our loved ones whether it was malice or recklessness that took us out of this world. The loss is the same. Evil vs. reckless intent is to an extent an important distinction--but not nearly as important as human lives.
If we wanted to, we could spend a trillion dollars medical research and making our roads better, heck we could ban extremely unhealthy food. Hey, I'm not a huge fan of the idea, but what's a few simple restrictions on fast food places compared to a vast network of domestic surveillence? Let people cook what they want in their own home, but ban restaurants from serving obscenely unhealthy food... at least to kids. I'm sure the libertarians in the audience are screaming bloody murder, but the fact is the free market ISN'T smart enough to make decisions that The loss of life is secondary to the terrorist, whose primary goal is to strike "terror" into the hearts and minds of his victems will (in time) save millions of lives each year. If you care about saving millions of innocent (if perhaps somewhat stupid, but then again who isn't? I try to eat healthy but often there just isn't the time, so I grab whatever's closest, which is usually shockingly unhealthy) lives, then it's a trivial restriction on our freedom. But don't try to justify (however obliquely) the expenditure of trillions of dollars and countless freedoms sacrificed for less than 3,000 American lives that were lost to terrorism in the past decade.
I'm sorry, but that just ISN'T significant compared to our other problems. Hey it sucks for the guys who died, but I don't personally know any of them because it is such a very small number of fatalities. I've known at least a dozen people who've died of cancer and a dozen more who've died of heart attack. Life > 'fighting the bad guys'. Oh yeah, and:
The loss of life is secondary to the terrorist, whose primary goal is to strike "terror" into the hearts and minds of his victems
Exactly. And by allowing yourself to vastly overreact due to this "terror", you in effect...(drumroll please)
Do you drive a white van too ?
Please explain to me the legal authorization for Echelon - a program which the NSA denied having for many years and which drove the Europeans, and some Americans, nuts because it violated every legal standard?
Actually, please explain how Echelon was legal but the current program is not.
Clear, Dark Skies
What oversight was Echelon subjected to - especially since the NSA has never even admitted that it exists?
Clear, Dark Skies
I know, I know... The facts are liberal. Go turn on Fox News and keep away from nasty "facts".
Yeah, yeah. I've never voted for Bush in my life, but I'm a conservative stooge for pointing out that this problem has been with us for a long time but people like you want to blame Bush because you either have (1) no knowledge of history or (2) no intellectual honesty.
As for Echelon being solely outside the US - how do you know that, seeing how the NSA has never admitted it's existence?
I especially find it amusing that you seem to think that it was okay for the US government to engage in the wholesale survellience of telecommunications as long as they were only monitoring foreigners.
Clear, Dark Skies
I'm also curious if the mainstream news media will pick this article and run with it.
Let's be honest...
The story came out on Friday, June 30th, and a Google News search doesn't yield any results beyond this Slashdot article. Furthermore, it came out on the Friday before the 4th of July. Since the 4th is a Tuesday, many people are taking the 3rd off and calling it a four day weekend. The odds of anyone paying attention right now are, sadly, quite small.
Beyond that, the likelihood of the media launching an investgation that would be characterized as a new attack on the American government over the 4th of July weekend is miniscule. It may come up in a week or so, but I'm not holding my breath.
Another way of saying that is Iraq was our ally during the Clinton and Carter years.
Clinton was president AFTER Bush Sr. The major ties with Iraq occured during the Reagan administration (you can still find pictures on the internet with Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam) which was AFTER Carter. This relationship soured when Saddam suppressed a Kurd uprising by using biological weapons.
And, of course, Osama still lurks in the shadows untouched, the perfect foil to our "strong" leader.
On the morning of 9/11 on CNN one of the reports/anchor people said "NSA is reviewing the cellphone calls" of the people from flight 93.
My head spun at that moment. Apparently CNN didn't think it that odd that the NSA would have those records.
Ascii artist &
And explain to people how to install encryption plug-ins, how to download/upload a key, how to revoke a key and that yes, they have to remember a pass phrase which has got to be a bloody long one if they want things to be secure. All that after you've convinced them that you're not a bloody tin-foil hat wearing lunatic for insisting on the use of encryption in the first place.
And when I can't remember my pass phrase anymore, I'll have to create another one, mail it to my contacts and ask them to trust me. Furthermore, I can't revoke the old key. Nice.
No thanks. I'll keep sending my mails in plain text. My e-mails aren't that interesting anyway.
The owls are not what they seem
Yet, reading the comments in this thread, I doubt that memory is shared by 25% of the people posting here.
Clear, Dark Skies
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... [sic] censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything --you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
>When one party controls all branches of government, the Constitutional checks and balances are ineffective because everyone with the power to stop a branch of government is part of the same organization.
The old Soviet Union had a pretty good constitution on paper. There were theoretical checks and balances, there were theoretical guarantees of human rights. What kept it from working, besides the Russian traditions of autocracy, brutality and corruption, was that the only way to get a government job -- legislature, executive, judicial -- was to be a Communist Party member. If you got arrested for publishing something the government didn't like, the Party member presiding over your court case wasn't about to risk his membership by enforcing the constitution.
That implies that someone was listening in or recording phone calls. The NSA has been asking phone companies to hand over phne RECORDS -- that is, a list of who called what people. Not exactly the same thing. It is, however, very illegal for phone companies to give out that information, which begs the question: Since the NSA is just asking phone companies (and some of those phone companies have refused), if your records are turned over, who should you be angry with--your phone company or the NSA?
By the way, USA Today -- which first reported all of this -- has since backed off part of the story. It seems many those phone companies really didnt' hand over the information, or at least, USA Today can't back up its claims that they did.
That being said, it's still a lousy program. The only way someone's domestic phone records would be useful to the NSA, is if that person were already being investigated and they wanted to see who he/she had been calling and when. Police use this information all the time, but if I am not mistaken they have to get a warrant or subpoena or something to get it. Why couldn't the NSA just do the same thing, if they were already investigating someone?
And while I'm ranting, congress knew this was going on all along, but decided to act all shocked and aghast when it came out in USA Today.
I hate politicians.
Could it be that no terrorist groups were based in Iraq before the invasion because Saddam was ruling with an iron fist? The fact that Saddam was terrorizing his own people and those of nearby places is the only reason I saw to support the war. Forget oil, and forget weapons of mass destruction; when a man's policy is nearly in line with those of terrorist organizations, there's no reason for them to terrorize his country. When foreign invaders move in with intentions of turning that country's practices inside out and upside down, local conservatives will suddenly appear to be terrorists.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
The legal advice we had - and I tabled it at the time - was that the action was entirely valid in international law terms," he said.
The British government - which has argued that UN resolutions provided a legal basis for intervening to topple Saddam Hussein - said the 2003 invasion was "not only lawful but necessary".
So much for Google, huh? Google does not answer legal questions!
Sometimes it seems only one side of the argument is allowed on Slashdot. Any attempt to question that single viewpoint results in troll mods. Disagreeing with someone or asking someone to clarify their claims doesn't make you a troll.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Lets see, they are a spying agency. They want to spy, and are paid to do so. They have all those cool (or otherwise) spy gadgets. Well, I doubt the Chinese phone company will let them put a master snooping system on their main phone systems. Guess they decided to cheese it out the easy way and spy on us/U.S. .
CIA, NSA, other TLA's filled with spooks, and the Homeland Security(joke) are not very effective, at anything useful to the american people. (Much less the world)
From the article:
The groundbreaker program is well known, in fact its infamous... in being a really really expensive network upgrade. The kind of thing with rewiring offices and buying lots of bandwidth from the likes of AT&T.
And I mean a lot of bandwidth. A lot of the DoD bandwidth contracts currently up for grabs are of course available online for anyone to see. (But shame on the nytimes, shame shame shame!) How did you think intercepted traffic came from all over the world back (But especially big telco sites) to Maryland? Still wonder why companies like AT&T want to do everything to help the NSA?
And of course groundbreaker is over budget and insecure.
So what is this secret new thing that is being claimed? The hints are:
It makes sense that the NSA would want a new but ordinairy "network operation center" with its new network. You really really need one of those to show politicians around (scroll to "nsa loads nmap" for a good laugh). Especially the ones who know nothing about intelligence except what they have seen on 24. (I would be funny if there werent so many schools planes trains and subways blown up around the world after 9/11)
Guiding them past the movie theater and showing the huge list of languages in which movies are shown isn't glamorous, though it should get the point across of sigint being of no use without humans to read and hear it... It might also show why having computers that can display bidirectional text isn't some fancy feature nobody uses. (Its usefull for such obscure languages as say Arabic, just to name something random of the top of my head.) I guess the lack of lighting the 24 set designers came up with for dramatic effect makes these NOC places a little cheaper to run than hiring qualified analyst though.
Sure it could also be a top secret surveillance program advanced beyond anything ever seen before, possible including extra terrestrial technology and tinfoil hat countermeasures... I mean in theory you could call that a NOC I guess.
This possible hype reminds me of the echelon story. After unspecific press accounts surrounding a big and sloppy EU investigation about "echelon" people assumed the worse and the hype started to build and build.
Now some time has passed historians have been able to figure out exactly what component is codenamed echelon, and it looks a little like this. (Thats an 70`s VAX 11/780, for those who couldn't tell, shame on you)
does this really surprise anyone?
While I agree that it is a statistical improbability that the average American will be killed by terrorism, killing people isn't really the objective. Look at the root word: "terror" or "fear".
Terrorists want to inflict fear in the general populace in order to create unrest and keep their cause fresh in everyones mind.
And while the amount of Americans killed by a terrorist attack each year really do not justify the amoutn of money spent on anti-terrorist activities (I'm not being crass here - compare the ratio to gun safety, auto accidents, other types of non-natural deaths etc), terrorism does have a profound effect on our economy. It is this overall affect on our society which makes terrorism so front-and-center. Unfortunately that is the ultimate goal of terrorism, to be on the top of everyone's mind.
Libertas in infinitum
What other governments could pay into AT&T's new service?
Check out all the nasty info...
http://www.gieis.uni.cc/
C is for all of my Calls you track
U is for how we're not Under attack
N is very very Not Nessecary
T is so much more Terror over in Iraq
Actually, read some of the other replies to my comment. I was hoping that by insulting Bush I'd deflect criticism that I was a merely a republican stooge parroting FN talking points. Sadly, I was wrong.
Clear, Dark Skies
I blame Bush for what he has done. Seems pretty simple and straight forward. You want to give him a pass...
ROTFL!
Ah, pure paranoia.
Please point to where, any where, in my posts where I said that the spying was good or that Bush should be given a "pass".
You do realize that the fact that I think the people on this forum have the attention spans of mayflies does not make me a Republican? Don't you?
Or is towing the slashdot line now part of the Democratic Party Dogma?
Clear, Dark Skies
Donnie, Bushie and Condie ...
... since the Supreme
Don't consider themselves citizens of the United States of America.
So, they have determined that the citizens of the United States of America
are the Enemy.
Therefore, Donnie, Bushie and Condie have declaired war on the
citizens of the United States of America
Court ruled that they cannot declare the Conterminus U.S. as
a Fedral Prison zone, they are left to declair war.
Toodles!
Oh I see, it must be politically motivated then, and therefore nothing more than those wacky liberals who hate Bush.
No, it's nothing more than mindless mayflies who think they can solve the problem by blaming Bush.
Forgive me, but to read, today, that domestic spying by the NSA is somehow Bush's creation when the stories and rumors about it go back thirty years or more - to read that today says more about the ignorance of the American people than it does about the malfeasence of one particular president.
Clear, Dark Skies
James Bond is an elite MI-6 agent who reads "top secret" documents over lunch. He drives expensive European sports cars. Terrorists and KGB agents shoot rocket-powered grenades at his cars, and he doesn't mind.
James Bamford plays with his own sort of fire: he pursues FOIA requests. Terrorists and KGB agents don't shoot rocket-powered grenades at his car, but then again... Mr. Bamford drives a Pinto.
There never was a peace treaty after the Iraq war. Not even a cease fire was signed. The US and Iraq has been legally in a state of war ever since the Kuait invasion. There was no surrender, no treaty, etc, the colation forces just decided to partially withdraw. There have been continued operations such as enforcing "no-fly" zones and attacking missle installations that shot at the aircraft doing so.
So while the war was an exceedingly bad idea, it does not appear to have any legal problems. There was a state of war, and the UN lacked the ability to pass a resolution stoppping it since the US has permenant veto power. None of that makes it right, but it does appear to make it legal.
Things like all the people getting flight training, when those countires hadn't the need for that many pilots. Obvious in retrosepct, but at the time what could you do? Suspicious, certianly, but not illegal.
I'm just not really sure there was anyting to be done to forsee something like 9/11. It's not like the peopel that plan this crap are e-mail eachother documents called terrorist_plans.doc that spell it all out.
It's real easy to look back, when all the connections are laid out and say "Look how obvious it is! Only an idiot could have missed it!" Much harder to reason it all out when you have a ton of seemingly unrelated info with no clear conneciton.
I liken it to something like Netwon's Laws of Motion. Once you've learned them and tested them, they seem extrememly obvious. You can't understand how you didn't know this. However, for all the "obviousness" it took one of the greatest minds of all time to figure them out and state them.
I think you are spot on that simply throwing more ifnromation at the counter terrorism problem isn't the answer. The issue isn't getting the info, we can already get warrants to target people and get all the info we need. The issue is knowing WHAT info is needed.
You can tap every phone in America, recognise all the speech, and searhc for key words, if the people involved in a plot are using deceptive termonology it still gets you jack shit other than a lot of people wasting time going over normal people talking about terrorist events that have happened.
It's true at any network. Our network security guys at work tried monitoring our netowrk for intrustions, but bogged themselves down in data. Their sensors were getting EVERYTHING, which made it all useless because there was so much. They didn't need more information, they needed BETTER information.
Same thing is true with the US. We don't need more info, we need better info. We need peopel infltrating these terrorist groups feeding us the info we need, not petabytes of useless e-mail traffic.
DUHHHHHHHHH...... What do you think we pay them for. The real problem is the sense of over importance most americans have. Let me clue you in on something. No one give a shit about you. NOT NSA, FBI, or even your local police. They don't care what you did Friday night or who you were with. Their problems is they have to much information to sift through. So odds are unless you are planning the next terrorist attack to rock the world or you are a writer for the NYTimes they don't care.
Ah, but you're forgetting that they have _computers_ to help them sift all that information. These aren't the sort of silly so-called computers that _we_ get to see, but the kind on TV shows and movies that can effortlessly enhance a blurry low-res piece of video into pristine 72mm quality and then tell you the make of bullets each perp has is his gun in real-time, take over a ring of secret US or Russian death satellites and use them to threaten the free world, or craft a virus that can cripple the computers controlling an entire alien invasion fleet. And remember, this is just the stuff that the TV and movie industry was allowed to show, not what the government and law enforcement actually has, which is obviously even more awesome.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
> Things like all the people getting flight training, when those countires hadn't the need for that
> many pilots. Obvious in retrosepct, but at the time what could you do? Suspicious, certianly, but
> not illegal.
Which country doesn't need 19 pilots? I can't think of many countries that would only require that few. You tend to get 2 or 3 pilots on each plane! Which country only has 7 planes?
Two words CLINTON & ECHELON!!!! The left is just looking for another reason to be the "haters" they claim their not.
The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/
Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/
War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/
Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)
They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.
The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Uhh...
:)
"The maxim is You can't eat your cake and have it too"
And the GP said:
"have your cake and eat it too"
These two statements are exactly equivalent, thanks to the use of the word 'and'. Note the absence of the word 'then', which you've apparently conjured from thin air...
You can have your cake and eat it. You cannot eat your cake and have it.
The word 'and' has no temporal meaning. But another way, "A and B" is identical to "B and A". This is in contrast to the word 'then', which clearly defines a temporal order (and is why you needed to introduce it in order to have your argument make sense). Thus, "have your cake AND eat it too" has the exact same meaning as "eat your cake AND have it too". Therefore, either they're both possible, or they're both impossible. Of course, common usage assumes the latter.
Funny how, on Slashdot, a simple cliche can turn into a lesson about grammar and logic...
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'.
Not 'durable', but 'rugged'. I read their tank quality wasn't spectacular, but they could be serviced pretty much anywhere while the German tanks often had to be taken to special repair shops in the rear. And that 'fast' part is beyond my understanding -- many Soviet designs were butt-ugly and slow pigs. Manoevrability was hardly their forté, mass, numbers and expendability was.
Finland bought some of their 'Jeep' equivalents in the late 20th century -- and they had to be custom-fitted with fuel tanks with refilling-corks. The Soviet doctrine was to drive as far as the jeep would go on a single filling and the dump it once it ran out of fuel.
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity.
You're overemphasizing the quality -- Axis (even German) weaponry was often lacking when compared with their immediate opponents, but their operational ingenuity (e.g., blitzkrieg, joint weapons and Auftrakstaktik) and keeping the initiative allowed them to compensate and dominate the early war. During the war, their weapons could be improved accordingly.
What the NSA is doing is fighting the last war over and over again: they're dumbfounded with the asymmetric warfare of the 'terrorists' (a lot of people get lumped under that label). The 'terrorists', on the other hand, have read their Sun Zsu and von Clausewitz: don't necessarily attack directly the mass of enemy forces, attack his/her strategy. That's why US still has very little chance of 'winning' -- the three-letter-agencies and armed forces are going for the non-existent mass army, non-existent WMDs and such.
No, "and" in itself doesn't have a temporal meaning, but the order in which we say things implies a sequence or priority. Of course if you take the conjuction "and" and stick it between two meaningless letters the implication isn't the same--you've divorced the statement of its context: the laws of causality. Besides, if you were correct no one would say it. I'm going to have some sugar and coffee now.
he is still regarded as being an honest politician
And that in itself is an indication that there's something not normal about him. I have little doubt that he believes what he says, the problem is, what he believes is insane.
Not that it has any relevance but as it happens neither, and this attempt at stereotyping says more about you than me.
Everything you said is a supportable opinion, but your comment runs aground on one matter of math: that Democrats want lower taxes. I've compared the tax plans and the ones where Democrats want lower taxes than Republicans are rather rare. It is almost always the other way aroud: Dems wanting higher taxes (even if, from your apparently libertarian point of view, the difference is relatively small). A good, and rather stereotypical example, of this is found in New Jersey right now. You have three factions: the governor, the Democratic majority, and the Republican minority. The two Democratic factions are fighting likes snakes on a plane over which of two massive tax hikes to put in place. The Republicans (despite their "good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism") are asking for a 0% tax hike.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"industrialists and the like (i.e. the Republican base) were tremendous supporters of the european fascists. It was only the American left (when we had one) that supported going to war against them"
The American left, pre WW-2, supported Stalin. In fact, large numbers of them joined Stalin's own political party (much more than numbers of Americans who joined the Nazi Party) Can you find a difference between the two that really matters? One that makes one a fascist and the other an anti-fascist? You can't, other than the most superficial difference of all: one type of fascist quotes Marx and the other does not. The American left threw their lot in with one fascist. This made them against one fascist, but not anti-fascist.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Don't worry yourself too much about such convoluted theories that rely on preposterous assumptions, "evidence" that contradicts all eyewitness accounts, and remarkable leaps of logic or superhuman impossibilities (like the OJ defense team's blaming of Mark Fuhrman, that, if accepted, had the man travelling 800 mph between locations where he was seen/planting evidence/etc). Any big event has this: a sort of surrounding cloud where pained minds create vapors of conspiracy theory. This explains the "Elvis at a Burger King in Kalamazoo" theories and the entirely fictional non-Oswald participants in the JFK assassination. If this was WW2 time, the same nutties would be providing irrefutable proof that no Japanese planes were actually at Pearl Harbor.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Also, it probably needs to be pointed out that when a building is brought down with explosives, the explosions typically start at the bottom."
By placing the explosives up high in the building, they sure fooled you, didn't they?
Where were you when the voynix came?