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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."
According to the UN. You know, that international body that the US blatently ignored when they invaded Iraq because those double-u em dee's were such a threat... oh right, what weapons were those again??
Iraq war illegal, says Annan
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> 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.
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Invading another country, when not in self-defense, is a war crime ("supreme crime"),
by the Geneva conventions, and USA has signed those and are bound by them. War crimes
carries the death penality in USA. As an invader you are also required to follow
local laws, with some exceptions. Of course, the invader may make new laws, but they
may be illegal as well. Instituting new laws in order to loot Iraq is not legal, and
you might have noticed oil companies reluctance to invest there...
Notice how the Bush Administration tries to avoid beeing persecuted for war crimes:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemI
> Do you honestly think that the Hague would indict an American for war crimes?
They may very well do so.
> And even if Bush were indicted, do you really think that anyone would try
> arresting him when the Marines would immediately be sent in to kick ass and
> retrieve the president?
It's unlikely that they'll indict while Bush and his croonies while he is in
office, but hey, there is no limit of stature for War Crimes. Note that the Bush
Administration has bullied many states into agreements of not delivering US citizens
(officials only?) to the International Court in Hague. This is an attempt to protect
themselves from persecution of their war crimes.
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
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!!"
It is an important but often overlooked fact that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were planned before 9/11.
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http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatures/nat2.a
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/15503
http://www.sundayherald.com/39221
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
If you're referring to the cache Hoekstra and Santorum have been parading in front of the news services, they were known about and listed on intelligence reports back in 2003. They were degraded beyond the possibility of use even back then.
rawstory
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
And no, you cannot argue that old, non-functioning weapons are the same as functional weapons. That is just inane. Did you even read the linked article?
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.
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.
Not at all. The US Constitution grants to Congress exclusively the power to declare war. It does not give them any option to delegate that authority, or shirk that responsibility. The *resolution* you refer to, to the extent it purports to delegate inalienable authority, is simply null and void under the Constitution.
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